Ugly, Simple Pages.... Works for me.

I've been an on and off DP forum viewer for a little while and I've certainly got more than my fair share of AdSense tips and tricks so I thought I would give something back. Now I'm no AdSense Guru, in fact I'm very far from it. However, I've recently made two changes to my AdSense hobby site and I've been more than pleasantly surprised.

Change 1
The first change I made (that yielded a 400% jump in results) was to split my content pages into two parts. The first page mostly remained the same however I cut the content down to about 2/3 of the original, and placed a link "click here for more on Green Widgets." This link would take my visitors to a bare bones page with 100% of the original content. I placed a skyscraper unit to the right and a banner unit on the top (no border and matched colours). The second page has nothing more than content, AdSense and a back link but it converts like crazy. I get the impression that more you have on your site i.e. graphics, nice layout, pretty background the more it takes away from your adds. Don't bombard your visitors with options and you'll probably find they make more decisions (clicks).

Change 2
Open your mind! I tend to be pretty set in my ways and like to think of myself as an experienced web design guy. I thought I had my layout down and that it was going to produce the best CTR - Wrong! Not every web surfer is experienced. It can be hard to look at your site from a first time visitors perspective. Change your layout regularly (even if you think you don't have to) and look for those spikes in CTR. When they happen it tells you something, your not always correct! Keep changing and tweaking, it will yield results.

Thanks for reading. I hope that someone out there takes away something useful from this!

 

Very useful. Makes sense that the fewer options you give someone, the more likely they are to click on one of the "escape" routes you want them too.

 

Change 1 is basically what any blog looks like if you think about it and change 2 only has to do with returning visitors.

 

I think you are on the right track. One thing to always keep in mind is that SE's only read text and they won't care either about page layout or fancy graphics.

 

I agree to an extent with your comment on change 1. My site is not a blog so I tend to come at these things from a different perspective. but when you do click a 'read more' link from a blog the second page looks identical to the first with the same links and layout. The difference I have made in layout and looks is what has increased my results, which is why I wrote this. Change 2 is not for return visitors, but as a way to gauge what works for ALL visitors in the best way possible - results.

 

When you say change the layout, are you redesigning the whole site often or just moving your ads around?

 

I tend to change the types of add units I use as well as moving the layout around. I would probably give it a ratio of 80/20 for AdSense changes/Site changes. I tend to use a lot of includes in my site so layout changes aren't difficult. I will try putting an add inside a content box instead of on top. I will try adding a banner here or there. Sometimes I will try something that I'm positive won't work, and 90% of the time it doesn't. But its that 10% that you wake up to and continue to use.

 

I found on one of my ugly sites' homepage that I was using different ad formats and colour and tracking each one to see if that small ad at the bottom left was doing better than that vertical wide 160x600 on the right.. or if it was better to use an horizontal adlink or a small box, which one does look more like a menu?
Anyway one day I was fed up, so I've put just below my header (logo+some navigation): three leaderboards 728x90 one below the others and after that the 728x15 adlink. No border and same link color for all, text and url in black for the leaderboards.
Incredible CTR for this homepage ever since! (for me incredible is 20% overall)

So really, you put your ads first and then the rest of the page is ad-free, if people want to click they can't miss it and those who don't want know where not to look. Simply make sure you use COLLAPSING UNITS or alternative ads so you don't loose space when there is no ad to display in the second or third block.

I don't do that for all my pages of all my sites, simply because I'm stupid and lazy to undo what I've done before.

But it sure works.

 

One thing I've found in a lot of situations is that, those who are design/art savvy tend to actually do worse in online marketing initially since they tend to focus too much on the design of the final product. I know because I'm a victim of this myself. I've always forced myself to create functional sites instead of pretty ones.

I think I might've just stumbled across your site last night! Is it red?

 

No i don't have a red one (but sometime I make the link_color red) but my next one will have a black background that's for sure, I find dark background seems better to make what you want to stand out and look attractive.

 

Change 1 is basically what any blog looks like if you think about it and change 2 only has to do with returning visitors.
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"The second page has nothing more than content, AdSense and a back link but it converts like crazy."

This is all well and good but are you not encouraging your visitors too much to click the ads by not leaving them much option?

In the long term I think you'll see a decrease in earnings as fewer of your visitors convert into sales for your advertisers.

 

A lot of advertisers havn't gone to the trouble of setting up a fairly thorough conversion tracking system through AdWords so Google's smart pricing tracking data I'm thinking is more of an educated guess (it could even be one of their instant-make-stockholders-happy variables they can alter at will to drastically change their income). Besides... what's to stop an advertiser from getting poor figures to trigger smart pricing across the sites that happen to display their ads?

 

Another reason idea #1 is good is because the main page(s) will appear more "legitimate" if it displays less advertising - or at least less visible advertising - compared to the interior pages where the "click here for more" links lead to (where more prominent ads appear).

Therefore I'd bet acquiring links to your site would be much easier too, whether from reciprical link exchanges or directory sites that manually "assess" link submissons before adding them to their own websites.

I have an 'article directories' resource page (#1 on google and yahoo) and manually cull submissions from article directory website owners all the time... and although I'm fairly lenient in using submissions from simpler, smaller such sites - there have been a few that were just packed with adsense and other ads where the included articles appeared to be almost an afterthought and not the primary function of their site. Those ones I ddn't include on my directory.

So a site designed along the lines of idea #1 would pass at least a cursory look from other website owners deciding whether to add a link to your site on their own. And that applies to places you directly submit to and also to ANY way inbound links may come about (ie someone blogging about a topic and considering linking to your site as a resource, after finding it themselves via a SE search, etc. Not something they'd likely do if your site is ad filled).

And interior pages don't *have* to be packed with adsense ads to the extreme discussed here... they can still be a viable clean page, yet also feature more ads than the main page and have no other links aside from perhaps a link to the home page....or not, since visitors can click their browser's 'back' button easily enough if they want to pop back to your home page. Otherwise they may click on an adsense or other ad instead.

My 2 cents.

-Steve