Noob Suggestion

Hi,

I have been watching this forum, and asked some questions, however I would definitely consider myself a noob at adsense.

Having said that, I have heard over and over again to improve your content, so for the past few months I have been working on my website, trying to improve it. I posted a thread a few days ago, and shenron suggested working on the page layout. I was a bit skeptical, thinking playing with the adds would "junk up" my pages, but I gave it a shot anyways. I added a couple ads with animated gifs, and added a few more adsense blocks to my page, creating channels for each to track which ad blocks were more effective. Well, a couple of interesting things happened. First of all, I received comments from friends saying it looked more like a "real" web page, and my CTR went from .08% to 1.82%. It has only been a few days, so it might just be luck, but I really dont think so.

I have also heard that adding images makes a huge difference. Once I have run with the current format, I will be adding images to see how much of a difference it makes.

BTW, if you are interested in seeing the difference in page design, you can check out http://www.allyearfootball.com/ROOT.v2b/welcome.do (the old version) versus http://www.allyearfootball.com/welcome.do (the new version)


All Year Football - Play Fantasy Football all year long

 

I hate to say it, but the animated gif ads do make your webpage look better.

 

I heard the google spiders prefer static pages as opposed to animated ones making it easier for your site to get indexed.

Obviously the animations have worked for you so is there any truth in what i've heard?

 

First of all I feel happy twice.

1 - Because you improved your CTR
2 - Because I wasn't very wrong and could help you out.

Now, I like the new version more the the first, but here's what I'd change:

Login screen: Move to the top right frame, on top of "Internet sportsbooks strive to make..." text. - This removes 1 frame there so you have left frame with ads, right frame with poll, login, etc...

Add an ad unit to "inside your content" - a Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) for example. Check this suggestion: https://www.google.com/adsense/inline
The same goes for your FAQ page, in where you can nicely blend dome ad into the content.

Maybe I wouldn't crowd the page 2 much with blinking ads. Remove 2 from the top or at least move 1 to the bottom.

Try these out and track the changes with channels. Hope this can make your site even a better cash cow.

Remove the "Advertise on this site" from the ads. - You can find how in your adsense account - my account - account settings - Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up and then remove the "Include me in Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up"
This make your ads look less like ads.

 

you might want to edit your post to just say that your ctr went way up, shouldn't post actual stats. Also, add more content to the middle section. The ads on the right side go wayyyy down, but there is no content next to them. Users wont scroll down just to look at ads, you need content by the ads if you want them to scroll down to see them.

 

IMHO the 2nd one looks more attractive but the 1st one definitely more cleaner. Hope you got a high CTR because football ads pay quite a lot compared to others. Even my site http://www.squarehippies.com about male celebrities got tons of football ads even tho I only feature David Beckham & soccer players in only a couple of pages

 

Thank you all for your help. It is kind of funny - I started this thread to give a little advice to people who are even newer than myself - I did not expect to receive even more advice!

Blacksocks - I dont know the effects of animated gifs on spiders, but I would guess that it has no effect - I doubt the spiders know the difference. My guess is that you heard static content is favored by the spiders, which would make sense.

Shenron - Once again, thanks a lot for some great advice, I will work on these changes pretty soon.

Judd - I agree with all you say. The ads that scroll way down are adbrite and adengage, and since I am not getting any money from them yet, I figured I would give them the worst real estate. As far as editing my post, I agree, however I think the post is too old, I dont have the edit button anymore.

Squarehippies - thanks for the wishes!

Thank you all for your input, it is really helpful, hopefully someday I will know enough to help out too.