My Food Based Humor Blog - Please Critique My Placements

Though my first reason for this site is to entertain the people and entertain myself, I would still like to make some revenue off of it if I can. Why not right?

I have been with Adsense a few years, always have had Adsense ads on my site, and have never even reach the $100 mark. Again, I never really was hardcore about making money off my site.

However, I would like your opinions/suggestions on my placements and what I could do to better my chances of getting some clicks. Also, do you think my niche is good for Adsense?

Looking forward to what y'all have to say.

My site: RamenDays.com

 

Also, I get about 500 UVs a day and about 1 click every week. haha, that's right. About 1 click

 

Hey I definitely think you header is great! nice concept. You can actually get a lot of relevant affiliate programs that direct to food that you can be reviewing on your site. This way the person that comes across your site will be able to read on the product and purchase it there.

 

I do not agree. I think its too big. People are lazy, they wont scroll down to start reading. I suggest you remove the topmost adsense unit and cut the height of your header in half.

500 UV/day and 1 click is impossibly low. I have a website with 400 UV/day and an average of 12 clicks.... (hebde.org). are you sure about this? If this is true (and the 500 UV are REAL visitors), this means you have to revise it completely, and I would start with the header.

Then, your navigation menu: home videos yourchefs submit advertise
I was looking at that and I thought to myself: what the hell does "home videos, yourchefs, submit advertise" mean?
Only after moving the mouse on the line, I realized that its a menu... Redesign it. make it look like a menu and not a line of text.

 

wperez, thanks for checking out the site!!

@ chaos: cool, thanks for the insights. yes, i totally agree with the navigation buttons. I actually just asked my friend today to change the nav buttons into drop down menus so people know straight off the bat what they are. my graphic design skills are only so, so.

regarding the header. i've never heard anybody critique that before. that's something i will take in and possibly change.

how about my other ad units? do you think they are placed correctly? do you have any other suggestions. like i said, i'm not really too versed in adsense nor am i a great web designer. all i do is blog...everything else is secondary.

regarding my UVs. I check my stats with my webhosting everyday. i get a couple hundred hits from google search, then yahoo is second, yelp, and then some other random ones. maybe i'm looking at the wrong numbers. add all those numbers up and i always see about an average of 500 a day. maybe i'm looking at the wrong stats.

thanks for the insights on my page. it's much appreciated.

 

Hello! The main problem is that your traffic comes from Entrecard and not search engines, right? If so, you should not be shocked, since all that Entrecard users do is click on that widget and ignore the ads (or the content). So I would try to focus more on developing more content and getting targeted visitors (search engine traffic).

Also, the ad above the logo is useless and, as others said, the logo itself is a bit too big. Also, I would replace the YouTube video with another banner OR raise the position of the 120x600 banner. Also, it would be wise to remove your "visit our sponsors" link above the said banner since Google's terms of service forbid using such invitations.

Hope it helps and you will get much more clicks in the future!

 

Hey Genicon, thanks for the cool info. I took yours and the others suggestions and removed the top banner ad and moved the vertical sidebar ad to the top widget position. I also took off the "visit our sponsors" text above the ads. I never knew you couldn't do that. I'm going to change the navigation buttons and make the height of my banner smaller. Maybe that's why my visitors never click or stay around to read the blog.

Most of my traffic comes from Google search. Just search "steamed tilapia". It's rank #2 on Google. It used to be #1 until recipezaar.com took the spot from me. Entrecard is the 4th-5th contributing site behind direct traffic, Yelp, Yahoo, and Google images.

I'm thinking maybe it is my website design that's the culprit behind me not getting so many clicks.

Thanks again for the insights genicon!

Anybody else with suggestions?

 

First, you have crap traffic from EC. That's really a hit for ctr and adsense performance!
Second - humour niche = fail with adsense

 

xxMirceaxx, thanks for your opinions. Do you have any suggestions with your critique or just a stand alone critique?

So if you're saying that a humor blog and adsense = failure then what would you suggest? Would you suggest any other ad programs? Hmmmm, maybe I should go back to focusing on banner ad sales and focus less on contexual based ads.

And like I stated in my last post, entrecard is not my main source of traffic so I don't see how that could be the major, major culprit. My main source of traffic is Google search. Entrecard is not even in my top 3 providers of traffic. Yes, I do have EC traffic, but it's not even 10% of the traffic that comes through my site. However, I do hear you. I agree, EC traffic is crap, but being that they're not my main source of traffic how much does that really effect my click through rate?

 

xxMirceaxx, just checked out your site. I really like the design. Especially the youtube video with the square ad right next to it. What is your best performing ad on that site? if you don't mind answering that question.

 

why not add the site to stumbleupon they just love humor sites. I added my joke site in november and since then my U V are 7,000 to 10,000 a day just from stumbleupon give them a try what do you have to lose.

What I would do is cut your pages down in half a lot of people will not scroll all the way down and read it.

 

hey jkadin, great suggestion with the stumbleupon. I will sign up right now. I actually have the stumbleupon link loading in my other tab as I type this

when yous say cut my pages down in half...can you please be more specific? might be a dumb question so please bare with me. do you mean use less words in my posts? only show 2 posts per page? use a "read more" at half the post so the user has to click that link to see the full post?

 

Blogs don't get a high ctr compared to stand alone content sites. I suppose humor blogs get the lowest, since the visitors enjoy your content and don't want to leave.

The best ad position is around the content.
I use a plugin that gives the impression there are not too many ads on my blog if you visit the latest few posts...only a small banner at the end of article ) If you visit a post older than 7 days though, things will change dramatically

 

how do you get traffic from yelp btw?

 

Cool, do you have a plugin that automates the ads in your posts? that would be a great plugin to have.

Since I write restaurant reviews on my site, I copy and paste those reviews into Yelp. If people like my reviews, they visit my profile where the link to my site resides. I'm guessing people like my reviews as Yelp is always in my top 5 of incoming links.

 

Hmm, that doesn't seem like a good deal! Yelp might outrank you with your own content! And for only a few hundred hits I don't think it is worth it
Plugin name is Whydowork Adsense

 

I guess it would be better if you make the text a little smaller. The bigger text makes the site longer. Most visitors are too lazy to scroll down. Also, try experimenting on different ad placements and note which one gives more clicks.

 

mircea, that whydowork plugin looks great. will install tonight.

aphrodite, cool idea. I did make the text smaller as suggested.

 

I love this Whydowork Adsense plugin! Thanks Mircea.

Since my first post on this thread, I've made some changes to my blog and have been getting more clicks. I already got 3 today. That's about how much I get within a week.

The changes I made were: my top banner was way too big (about 970X250). Now my top banner is 242X90. Next to that banner I placed a large banner ad right next to it. I also made the text in my content a little smaller. I changed the navigation buttons of the site into regular text buttons. They were image buttons that were a bit confusing for the readers. I also added a text link ad unit at the bottom of the navigation buttons. I placed a large square ad on the top right of the sidebar. I also added a search unit at the top of the sidebar. I also used the Whydowork Adsense plugin so all pages and all single posts have a small ad within the content of the post/page.

I think the site looks much cleaner now and is ready for some clicks. Any other critiques or suggestions for me????

 

I firmly believe you have had a solid start. As one can tell you have put in a lot energy in your site. I love your site simply because I like food. I am a web designer, from design point of view, the usability and accessibility can be improved which may lead to more traffic on your site.