How I Increased My Adsense CTR Using These 5 Ways

By Raman Sharma

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Google Adsense is the most popular advertising program for bloggers around the world for making money online and most bloggers are making hundreds of dollars per day through Adsense. But there are many factors that affect your Adsense revenue.

I know the content is the most important factor for deriving traffic and earning money but what if you’re getting good traffic and still unable to earn the desired money? I think in that case you would be getting a lower CTR. A lower CTR means lower ad clicks and fewer clicks means lower revenue.

So, CTR is a very important factor for better Adsense revenue from your blog but you should know how much CTR is recommended for Adsense publishers. According to many experts, your Adsense CTR should be between 2 to 3 percent and some say up to 5% is fine but not more than that because if you get CTR more than 5%, Google may consider it as unusual behavior and have an eye on your account and your Adsense account may be blocked forever.

Well, this article is the reflection of my self-experience in which I increased my Adsense CTR from something 1.5% to 4.2% by testing lots of experiments with my Adsense account and finally, I’m going to share the 5 ways that helped me to increase my Adsense CTR.

Before telling you about these methods for increasing your Adsense CTR, I would like to clear a few more facts about CTR in your mind.

What is CTR?

CTR (Click-Through Rate) is the number of clicks received for the total number of ad impressions. Or in other words, the CTR is the number of times a click is made on the advertisement divided by the total impressions (the number of times an advertisement was served).

It can be calculated as follows:

CTR Calculation

For example, if an ad banner is delivered 100 times (100 impressions) and receives one click, then the click-through rate for the advertisement would be 1%.

Here’s How I Increased My Adsense CTR Using 5 Ways

Increase Adsense CTR

However, there were lots of experiments I did but a few of them succeeded. So, here I’m going to tell you the methods to successfully increase your Adsense CTR. Most of these methods are very popular and suggested by several bloggers worldwide but you won’t believe that one of these 5 methods worked for me as a panacea for increasing the CTR and I’m sure that you will be surprised to know about it.

The method I called panacea is really amazing and quick way to increase the CTR. I mentioned it at last (at 5th position).

1. Placement of Ads

However, it’s not that important because in most cases the performance of ads depends on your own content, not the placement. This is because I experienced this fact myself. I often change the position of ads on my site but there becomes a very negotiable change in CTR. But, this case may not be for all. So, here I’m going to tell you some most appropriate positions (I tested them all) for placing Adsense ads to get higher CTR.

  • Just below the post title
  • After one of two paragraphs of your content
  • Top of the sidebar or after one widget of the sidebar
  • Header
  • After the complete post (less recommended for high CTR)

2. Avoid Ad Blindness

Here’s why I called the above method not very important because if you keep your ads placed at a location without making changes for a long time, then the viewers on your site may be ad blind. It means they will start ignoring ads from a point of view. So, it is also suggested by most of the experts that you should keep changing the position and sizes of your ads and it is the best way to avoid ad blindness.

3. Be Careful About Ad Sizes

Yes, it is also a very important factor to increase your Adsense CTR because it is necessary to have appropriate ad sizes that fit the layout of your website. However, bigger ad sizes attract the viewer’s attention and are good for high CTR but it’s not the case for everyone because you should be careful about your website layout and according to layout select the ad size.

If any of your ad size becomes odd, it may affect the overall look of your blog and users can also leave your blog. Moreover, I suggest you to use the ad sizes that are recommended by Adsense itself while you create a new ad unit.

4. Number of Ad Units

If you’re thinking that the maximum number of ad units means a maximum number of clicks, you can almost be wrong because a maximum number of ad units is not a factor for increasing CTR and even can lead to reduce your search preferences.

I mean to say if your website has quality content (well written with more than 350 words) on each page, then only you should show the maximum number of ad units permitted by Adsense otherwise only show one or two ad units that perform better and reduce the low performing ad units from your page. Also, make sure that Adsense doesn’t allow more than 3 ad units per page.

5. Smarter Responsive Ad Unit (The Panacea)

I know you all might know about responsive ad units and the importance of responsive ad units so you may also be thinking about what is different here so I’m calling it a Panacea. The different thing is that by making a few changes in your Responsive ad unit code, you can make it as panacea for increasing your CTR amazingly.

Generally, when you create a responsive ad unit and add it to your blog, it mostly shows the horizontal banner of 468×60 or 728×90 but I really wanted to show this responsive ad unit in rectangular form so that it can cover the full width as well as the full height of a standard rectangle ad unit.

For this, just create a responsive ad unit in your Adsense account and as usual copy and paste the code in your blog but before saving changes look for the following term in that code.

data-ad-format="auto"

Now, you just need to replace “auto” with “rectangle” as shown in the following line.

data-ad-format=”rectangle”

That’s it, now save changes and you will see that your Ad unit is now looking better than ever before by covering the waste space also and even it will fit every size of screen because it is a responsive ad unit.

Further Reading:

Have any trouble..?

The above methods are the best of my self experiences, of course, a few of them I learned from the web and applied on my blog and after testing that they’re working perfectly I shared with you. So, still, if you’re having any trouble applying any of the steps or have any questions regarding the whole article, you can feel free to ask me via comments. I will be grateful to help you guys.

Good luck 🙂

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11 thoughts on “How I Increased My Adsense CTR Using These 5 Ways”

  1. Hello Raman,

    Does this rectangle ad (responsive ad) Step 5 will work better than large rectangle ? Please let me know – just curious 😉

    I’m sure you must had tried keeping large rectangle ad below post title right and then shifted to step 5 ads (rectangle)

    Please do let me know which ad i should keep ? as large rectangle isn’t working any more for me. I’m getting around 0.50% CTR or even lesser some days.

    What CTR you’re getting for rectangle ad !!!

    Awaiting for your replies 🙂

    Reply
  2. Very interesting article. But, I’m unable to understand how the last method is PANACEA. Have you tried it? Is it safe to try? I mean Google allows it to apply these changes?

    Reply
  3. Hey Raman,

    I tried your 5th method and I implemented it successfully on my website. Luckily, as you called your way effectively increased my Google Adsense CTR up to from 1.1% to 5% but I’m experiencing the reduction in CPC from the day I implemented it.

    Any suggestion will be highly appreciated!

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • Hi Shridhar,

      The reduction in CPC might be due to any other reasons. May be Google showing small advertisers on your blog, or any other reason.

      Try the ad unit for at least a week and then notice the effects.

      Reply
  4. Interesting article Raman. I am interested in implementing #5 but I can’t seem to find the code “data-ad-format=”rectangle”

    Any help?

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • Hey,

      As mentioned above in the 5th point, first of all create a responsive ad unit in your Adsense dashboard, get code. In this code, you should find data-ad-format=”auto” which you will be needed to be replaced with data-ad-format=”rectangle” and insert anywhere you want in your website.

      That’s all!

      Reply

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