8 Tips For Visitor-Friendly AdSense Placement

Yesterday I showed you how to choose AdSense colors that look good on your blog.

Today I am going to give you some tips about where to place AdSense and how many / what kind of AdSense units to use.

1. Use Text Ads Only

It depends on your site, but I have never found that Image ads worked for me. There is a place on AdSense Setup where you can choose “Text and image ads”, “Text ads only”, or “Image ads only”. Once in a while, I have tried Image ads, and some of them looked ok, but then a horrible-looking one would come along and ruin the looks of my site. It is a lot easier to control the looks of your site if you just use Text ads.

2. Only Use One Ad Unit Per Page

I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with me on this, but this is what works best for me. The page looks a lot better with only one ad unit.

In my opinion, you also get better amounts per click if you only use one ad unit. This is because you will get only the highest-paying ads in the first ad unit.

But the most important point for me is that the page just looks better. It shows my reader that I am not just trying to plaster ads all over the place without regard for how it looks to the visitor.

3. What Size Is Best?

The best size varies by where you put it.

I have had good luck with the Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) or Large Rectangle (336 x 280) placed in the upper left hand corner of the post, just under the post title. Pick a size that still leaves enough room for text to flow around it on the right.

Another good format is the Skyscraper (120 x 600) or Large Skyscraper (160 x 600). This works in the sidebar, but I have found more people click on it if it is in the post area, either to the right or the left, with the text of the post next to it. In this case, it looks almost like a 3rd column (if you have a 2-column theme).

These ideas can get you started, but this is something that you need to test on your own site.

4. Use Link Units Sparingly, If At All

The horizontal link units can work well if you put them where you would normally look for site navigation. I used to use them there, but it felt a little deceptive. I really don’t use them much any more.

5. Don’t Put Ads On Your Home Page

If you want people to link to you, keep the ads off your home page. This is the page that most people will check when deciding whether to link to your site. You want it to look good and not like a made-for-adsense site. So don’t put ads here.

It really will not hurt your income too much. A lot of people enter your site by one of the single post pages, and you will have ads on those. Even if they do enter by the home page, they will often click through to a single post page, where your ads are.

6. Put Ads Above the Fold

“Above the fold” is a term that came from newspapers, where it meant the part of the page that you can see when the newspaper is folded in half. On websites, it means the part of the page that you can see without doing any scrolling.

Put your ads above the fold so that your visitors will see them. Many visitors will not bother scrolling.

7. Have Most Of Your Site Navigation Below the Fold

If you really want people to click your ads, don’t have a lot of other places they can go visible above the fold. If my navigation is in my sidebar, on my AdSense sites, I will often have something like a photo or a quote, or maybe a link to my RSS feed, rather than actual site navigation, above the fold.

This way, the people who are not interested in scrolling will be more likely to click on the AdSense.

8. Keep Your Visitors In Mind

This tip sums up all the other tips.

What would you rather have, a site with very few visitors, but earning a lot of money per visitor, or a site with many, many visitors, even if you earn less per visitor?

I would rather have the high-traffic site, even if I earned less per visitor.

This is why I focus on my readers first, and the ads second. I want my sites to look good and be useful to my visitors, so that they will come back, and so they will link to me, bringing me even more visitors, and so I will rise up in the search results.

With a good, useful site, you always have room for growth, because you can market it and get more visitors.

No matter how much you market a horrible, ad-overloaded site, you will not increase your visitors by much.

On the other hand, don’t be ashamed to have some ads on your site. These can be helpful to your visitors. They may find things there that they could not find on your site, making them happy, and making you happy by getting AdSense clicks.

Think of your ads as a service to your visitors. Make sure they are seen, but make them nice-looking and tasteful.