4 Proven Strategies For Increasing Your AdSense CTR (Part-1)

While AdSense isn't the only way to make money off your website, it is definitely one of the easiest – all
you have to do is configure your ad, drop it into your site template and pat yourself on the back – you're
done for the day.
Unfortunately though, setting things up, and actually making money from AdSense are two different things.

To earn money from AdSense you need:
1. visitors ( traffic )
2. clicks on your ads (ads that attract clicks – increasing your CTR )
3. high payout from those ads ( profitable keywords )

As far as traffic is concerned, that's what this newsletter is all about! In the email you received for this
lesson, browse through the archive list at the bottom of the email, and review what you can about building
massive amounts of search engine traffic to your website.

(In the next few lessons I'll be doing a special series on traffic building techniques – very powerful, proven strategies that you must not miss – stay tuned).

How do you get people to click on an ad?

1. Make them pay attention to it – if they aren't looking, they aren't clicking
2. Have ads that match the reader's needs – search engine visitors are typically looking for information on a particular topic – are you giving them at information? Are your ads?
3. Overcome the “this is an ad – ads are bad” psychological barrier – in our society and on the Internet we are continuously bombarded by ads and there is a subconscious resistance to them – you have to either overcome it or ... as I'll show you, sidestep it.

Attracting Attention

Most people think that the best way to attract attention is to use bright colors and generally make sure that the ads stand out. It's a good idea in theory, but think of what happens in the real world. The first time you see a bright, garish advertisement, you look at it because it is distracting. The second time though, the advertising is less distracting, although you still look at it.

By the fifth time around, you are able to ignore the bright ad completely and focus on what you were doing before.

This is called ad-blindness – the human mind shutting out the distractions of ads (actually, this applies to people and almost everything else around you as well) that are not helping them get what they want.

So first you have to figure out what your readers want. Then you have to make sure that your ads match that.

Relevant Ads
What are your readers looking for? If it's a search engine visitor, they are usually there looking for information on a topic –the keywords they typed into the search engine to get there in the first place.

Since they have come to your website looking for more information on that topic, you'd want your ads to be about the same subject so that your visitors pay attention to the ads (because they are relevant to they are searching for) and click on them.

Mental Ad Block

How do you circumvent the inherent bias people have against ads?
By changing them into information.

Quite simply put, your AdSense blocks should be less like ads and be more like the text on your pages.

Since your visitors came to your website looking for information on a particular topic, your goal is to ensure that your ads look as much like that information as possible