After the Google Adsense post the other day and explaining some of my settings and strategies, I thought one tip I mentioned should be given more explanation.
This little tweak can improve your earnings significantly so it is something to keep in mind when you plan your monetization with Adsense.
I kinda only mentioned it, but I did get several questions about it via e-mail. I think it would only be fair to explain the strategy a bit more.
I mentioned that if you want to make more money with Adsense, you should have less ads. Yeah, sound crazy, I know. But it works.
There is one important number in Adsense which we will revolve around in this post – CTR, the famous Click Through Rate.
Ad CTR = Clicks / Ad impressions
The higher the CTR the better your pages are performing. High CTR means that a large percentage of people are clicking on your ads (in simple words).
Now I am getting to the point of the post… Every advertiser wants their ad to bring traffic, so he wants more clicks. Obviously, pages with high CTR are getting more clicks and advertisers want to see their ads on those pages.
They “compete” to put their ad on a high CTR page. If you have one of those, you will get better, higher paid ads on your page. Higher paid ads bring more money.
How to increase your CTR?
By using all the tips about placement, colors and sizes (and everything else) from the previous post - Money From Google Adsense. But that is only the start.
The next thing you need to do is – remove ads from some pages. You will remove the ads from all pages that have low CTR.
How to find pages with low CTR?
The best thing you can do for your blog/site is to track everything using free Google tools. That includes Adsense and Analytics. So to track your efforts easy, connect your Adsense account to your Analytics account (this link should help you).
That way, you can see exactly which pages have low CTR. No need for some complicated settings, it is there in plain view.
Once you have all your pages in front of you, you need to choose which are the ones with lowest CTR. Don’t look at the ones with only a few clicks if their traffic is low as well. Low traffic and few clicks usually mean average CTR.
What you need are the pages that don’t perform well.
First, determine which pages have the best CTR. See if there is a group of such pages.
For example, when I did this on my site, I tested about 45 pages that had Adsense on them. I found 10 that performed really well, with CTR about 3%. About 25 of them had CTR anywhere from 1.5% to 3%. But I had 11 pages that had CTR below 1%.
So this should be your guide. Find pages that have CTR significantly lower than the majority of them.
Track the traffic the page is receiving. If you have a page that gets 2.000 visits but CTR is 0.5%, you are not doing great. Maybe you can monetize that page much better!? It is obviously not working with Adsense.
What to do when you find low CTR pages?
I removed Adsense from all of those 11 pages. So overall, my CTR went up. (I did this such a long time ago, I wish I had the screenshots to show you the differences, you would be amazed).
As soon as I did this, I am talking after a day or two, I started getting more money from a single click. That means that the ads delivered to my site were more expensive.
So, simply remove ads from pages that don’t perform well!
What do you need to get this to work to the max?
You need to have a topic focused site. That way Google will deliver very targeted ads. Targeted ads mean more clicks.
Keyword focused pages. Yes, every page should have one keyword to focus on (these are basics of SEO).
Connected Adsense and Analytics accounts for tracking purposes.
Previous tested: best colors for ads, best sizes, best placements.
Certain amount of time to determine which pages have good CTR and which don’t.
A lot of tracking and testing.
Delete and “throw away” everything that is not working.
Extra tips and tricks for making money with Adsense
Lower your page bounce rates. If they are high, the problem might not be the ads themselves. What might be happening is that people are clicking the back button before even having the chance to click on the ads.
Find the best paying keywords using Google Keyword Tools or Market Samurai and put them in the paragraphs above and below the ad units (but only if they make sense in the text). That usually pulls up even better targeted ads.
I hope this explained the tactics I mentioned the last time a bit better. Talk to me and share the post 
UPDATE: There were questions about a plugin that will help with integrating Adsense and WordPress. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel found a really interesting plugin that can help you with this and was even kind enough to explain how to set it up! Enjoy – Advertising Manager Plugin.
Related posts:
There’s no reason to keep adsense on low traffic pages, but before removing them you should consider way the pages are low..check the headlines..
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
I don’t think it will matter that much, this doesn’t have much to do with headlines only. There are many factors that will affect Adsense CTR and focusing on headlines only, would be a waste of time in my opinion. If a page has great traffic but low CTR I doubt it will be the headline.
Then again, I suggest this tip after you do all the testing and tracking and you are sure you are getting the max out of your ad size, color and placement.
Hi Brankica,
Great adsense tips you I’ve given here.From my own experience the keywords you are targeting will determine your profits.Those keywords must be with high CPC.The most successful adsense sites I have contain the keyword I’m targeting in their domain name and I bought the domain name because my keyword research showed they have a high CPC. Some clicks are up to £2 which is great.
You’ve given me an idea to later write a detail plan for a successful adsense site.
Hey Alexis, here is one interesting thing. My first site is targeted at words that are very cheap actually, but I get clicks worth even $1.5. For a niche with most keywords being less than 0.05, I think that is really something.
But I built a site on a thing I like, didn’t focus it on Adsense keywords. But I think no matter what a person builds a site on, they can still profit from Adsense by optimizing pages and testing ads.
Thanks for the tip
Putting those keywords above and below the ad units makes a lot of sense. i was wondering how to really get those ads more targeted.
Sometimes I might have the keyword in bold or something, in the title and in an h1 but the ads still don’t pick up on it lol.
I can’t wait to experiment with this!
So are you using these on a wordpress site? Are you using the whydowork plugin or easy adsense plugin?
I don’t use plugins, I usually put ads either in a hook (like in Thesis) or manually place ads.
I don’t bold my keywords and I know some people suggest that as a way to SEO but I really don’t believe that since I have never bolded keywords but have a bunch of pages on pages 1-3.
Bingo, Brankica (awesome name btw) i was going crazy trying to figure out which pages get the highest ctrs. I have many logs and they are all using some type of adsense plugin.
After some quick look around i realized that my google analytics plugin can also link to my adsense account. I did just that and i’ll check back in a few days to see the results.
Cool, make sure to tell us how this worked for you
Excellent advice, Brankica. I’ve never really given it much thought and have always just slapped some ads up in strategic locations and hoped for the best. It would be great if I had two or three of me so I could focus some time on things like this.
I know what you mean, I wish I had 2 or 3 of me too (although people around me probably would not like it, lol).
Hey when it comes to making money (if that is the goal) it should be priority
Great tips Brankica. Another thing to take into consideration is the average CTR for the niche you are in. I have some niches that get 2% CTR, and then others that get a 15% CTR. My best site has a 25% CTR.
Hey Fred, that is great, I have never heard of a site that has overall CTR higher than 8%. You are really rocking it
Fred I second that my best site in terms of adsense revenue has an overall ctr of 8% and although i know which pages get the most traffic i have no idea how to find out which ones get the best adsense ctr…
You should be able to see it in Analytics or set up channels for pages.
I should probably better optimize my Adsense. Right now it’s just sitting on sites that I don’t really pay that much attention to, yet it still brings in a good bit of income on the side. Nothing to live off of, but enough to be happy about.
Hey Kristi, you could probably do some little tweaks and earn way more. That is what happened to me the first time I decided to optimize them a bit. Since you already know they are making money, you can test small changes and of course – come back and brag about it here. Or better take a pic with a fat check
Hi Brankica
Once again your timing is great. After reading this post I have just linked my AdSense account to your Analytics account. As soon I get some more data to work with I will try to follow your advices. Thank you once again
I am waiting for feedback when you are done with your testing. And if you make piles of money based on this, I expect a shipment on my door, something like Peter Schmeichel’s poster
Hehe, I think it will take a little time before the money are rolling in on my account, but I will for sure not forget who helped me getting started
Are you a fan of Peter Schmeichel?
Lol, I am gonna wait for your tweet screaming “I got my first Adsense check”
Oh yeah, him, Eric Cantona and few others
I am afraid you will have to wait for a very long time my friend. Have not even reach 50 cents
I guess I need a lot more traffic and maybe I need to reorganize my ads on my blog. I have one in the top of my sidebar and one in the bottom of each post. Maybe I should put one in top of each post too.
Yep Eric the King was great. Actually I am a big fan of Man. U. and have been for more than 20 years. Great they took home the title (19) this weekend. I can’t wait for the Champions League final against Barcelona on Wembley
Great post! I have a rather large site that does well with Adsense. I have my earnings integrated with Google Analytics. Every once in a while I will review what pages are getting a lot traffic but have low CTR.
I like to work with the low CTR pages for a while before removing the ads. One thing that has been cashing in high percentage returns is placing a 468 x 60 directly below a Youtube video.
Adsense is a funny thing. If someone finds your page looking for a particular product, people click on the ads often.
If a visitor finds an informative article on “How to do something,” then they seem to leave without clicking the ads.
I have a site that helps people locate music stores that averages a 12% CTR just because people are looking for music stores and Google serves very relevant results. It helps that there are no other options on the page other than Adsense for them to click on.
I
That is the point with informational pages, people are searching for info, not product.
That is why people try to post a bunch of pages with “buying keywords”, so instead of explaining “how to make a shelf”, they will go with stuff like “best DIY DVD build a shelf”, and similar variations.
Great to hear that Adsense is still working for a lot of people!
I had my adsense income drop by 90% last year, and haven’t had the time nor the courage to make it work again.
This will get me started again though!
Hey Bjorn, did you ever discover why did that happen?
A combination of several things, the economic crisis didn’t do too much good I believe, but besides that 2 other things: 1 of my well earning sites had to be taken offline due to legal issues (some layer claimed his name was being used in a bad way in the forum, while in fact one of his clients was telling everybody how great he was
). And on another well earning site, there was one particular article that was generating heaps and heaps of traffic, since the topic was very trending. But the trend is over now 
So, I’m basically looking in writing another killer-trending-topic-article
Oh, I get it. I thought that you had one site that had steady income and then just dropped. Yes, this (unfortunately) makes more sense.
Just came around to commenting on this post. I finally found a plugin that could do it right. I’m using Advertising Manager @ the moment and it works pretty well too
Thanks for an awesome tip.
That is great. If you by any chance write a review and tutorial about the plugin, send me the link so I can post it here, it will help
Thanks a lot. I guess I’ll just have to find time to work on it over this weekend though I’ve got a busy schedule in the hospital. Thanks again for the offer
Triple WOW, Brankica!
After your last post on Adsense, I didn’t think you would have any more left to share! Of course, I should have known better – you’re simply amazing!
How long do you generally wait before removing the Adsense articles from individual posts by the way? And do you know of any other advertising programs like Adsense?
Seriously awesome, Brankica! I tip my bonnet off to you.
Keep on rocking the blogosphere!
Christina
Hey Christina, I will wait for weeks and weeks, to make sure I have a good number to look at. Because sometimes a new page picks up really fast and sometimes it takes time. So, even if a page has CTR of less than 0.5% I will leave it for a few weeks at least to make sure it won’t pick up a bit. In the mean time I experiment with that page, to see if different placement or color would work better.
Adsense alternatives would be (although not all looks exactly the same as Adsense) Chitika, Infolinks, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, Kontera, Adify and PopShops (this one actually created Adsense looking ad from your affiliate links).
I am using Chitika and Infolinks for now and testing some others. These two did not perform as good as Adsense but I know they work great for some people. Bidvertiser is great to have as back up in case Adsense decides to cancel your account.
And thanks so much for the nice words, you make me blush!!!
Awesome! Thanks for the tips, Brankica. I really appreciate it!
I also use Chitika and Infolinks, though both of them aren’t performing as well as I’d like them to. They are good to have though.
Christina
Thats a Great Tip ! I have never got this idea from last 1 year. Will implement is asap. Thanks for your post.
On some of my sites I have the max amount of Adsense units on the pages, and I know that’s a lot! I should probably experiment with taking one off and seeing if that has a positive or negative effect. How would you go about removing Adsense from only specific pages in a blog? I have all of my units hard-coded into my blog, so I can’t just remove them from a few pages here and there.
I am not sure how should you do it on your blog because every theme is different. Mine doesn’t have any Adsense coded in it. But if you can remove ads from low performing pages, you can probably make more money with Adsense. By the way, your blog looks really interesting, had no clue you can find so many different guitar picks.
From my own experience of making money on AdSense I can say that earnings directly depend on two main factors – targeted traffic of a website and placement of AdSense advertising blocks. Sometimes it is enough to change placement of advertising block and earnings begin to increase immediately. Don’t be afraid of making experiments.
Yup, that is exactly what the previous post is about (this was more of a follow up). Tracking, testing and experimenting are definitely the way to go
Wow this is a great idea. I’ve been playing around with Google Adsense on my website a lot trying to find new ways to make more money. I’ll give this a shot and see how it does. Thanks for the suggestion!
Hey Michael, hope you make some progress with it and if you have any results you wanna share with us, please feel free to do so
Is it a forced way to get higher CTR as Google has intelligent algorithm and it will be detected by the Google.On detection what will be the status of Adsense account.
No, Google wants you to have as bigger CTR as you can because that means more money for them.
Love your point on removing ads with a low ctr, I must admit I have not been taking my analytics account seriously enought since starting my IM101 blog, but am about to launch my new blog and move all my content over to that once I finish building a theme for it, so will have to keep this post bookmarked!
Many thanks Brankica made a lot of sense to me!
All the best, Phillip Dews
Hey Phillip, can’t wait for the update on all that!
I can just add that I recently did this again and noticed about 50% raise in PPC on ads they display on my blog!!!
Wow 50% thats impressive, well was going to work on the new blog today but it seems everytime i try and work on it i get another cash job to work on! oh well at least i still got my IM 101 blog hey
You know that it is against Adsense TOS to say the exact amount you get for a click, but the main site that makes money for me has low paid keywords and I still manage to get them very high with this tactics
Great tip here Brankica. I avoid placing too much Adsense units on one page. The most I now place on one page is to units and this seems to work out better for me.
Newbies think that the more they have then the more click they will get, but they should know that visitors aren’t coming to our website or blog just to click on the ads.
Exactly, and especially in our niche where people are not only ad blind but most of them don’t click cause they are already using advertised stuff or not interested in them.
Hi, Brankica:
What about those themes that are Adsense themed, such as Adsense Alive and the Heatmap theme. These themes promote multiple usage of units. My best success with Adsense has been the 336×380 right below article titles in single post pages. What is your opinion on Adsense specific WordPress themes?
Also do you happen to have experience with accounts that have their Adsense separate than their Analytics. This is my problem with not being able to test *which pages* are bringing in the dough. Any experience with this?
p.s. found you and your blog via Twitter
Hey Missy, I can’t help answering the question about themes cause I am using Thesis and have not tried any of the themes created for Adsense. I hope someone will answer if they know.
I understand that the Themes promote multiple usage of units but there can’t be too many per page, as per Adsense TOS.
The thing that “worries” me more is (and I don’t know how the themes work) if you add an ad to a specific position, for example under the title, and it is displayed (because of the theme) across the whole blog. That defeats the purpose of having Adsense friendly theme, because that would make it friendly but not optimized.
I had a “problem” where I once changed the Adsense account and had to figure out what to do about the Analytics. I just moved the sites from the old analytics account to the new one. Can you do that? If you have access to both accounts, this is by far the easiest thing to do. It took me just a few minutes, all I did is add the sites to the new account and replace the tracking codes.
If you get stuck just send me a message.
If you don’t have the access to both accounts, I do know that you can be authorized to access Analytics by the original user but I don’t think you will be able to see the Adsense stats.
Hope this helps a bit. Glad you found my blog and hope to see you here again!
So you’re saying you manually add in Adsense to selective articles only? But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of Adsense which is suppose to serve up related ads to all your content. Let me know more.
Missy
p.s. As for my Adsense and Analytics account not being connected, will have to look into it further.
I understand what you mean, but if you serve ads on every page and some pages are not getting traffic nor clicks you will be served less valuable ads and hence make way less money.
This and the previous post explain exactly why you should NOT display ads on every single page and how to set up your site/blog for maximum performance.
Hey Missy,
I’m by no means an expert but an adsense code shows relevant ads the content shown to the reader.
Tiny little robots crawl your page and determine your content. Those robots in turn locate ads that they think are relevant to your content. There are certain things you can do to optimize the ads. The better your content is, the better the ads are and the same goes for income..
The more ads you have on a page the less income you make from readers. Having just one block of ads on a page yields more income per click then having several ad blocks on the page.
I have on one website talked about different topics not necessarily in the same niche. When I checked the individual pages the ads were tailored to the specific pages.
Hope that helped
I believe that actually varies based on the blog. Different layouts work differently, as well as different content. More ads may work on one blog, and less will work better on another.
That is the whole point, I explain that you need to test and track a lot to determine what works for you. However, this strategy works for everyone, because it isn’t about discovering what works, it is about optimizing and maximizing on already working results.