Site Targeting and Poorly Optimized Pages

Need a Reason Make your pages attractive to advertizers.

[ken_b]

I just read a post in the Adwords forum about Site Targeting that might be the basis for some interesting discussion here in the Adsense forum.

Arinick says in message 2 of this thread [webmasterworld.com] that.....

most importantly-- visit every site on which your ads are appearing. Remember, if the site isn't following the Adsense principles for maximizing CTR, then you aren't going to get a good CTR. Plain and simple.

The Adwords "Site Targeting" feature can be an benefit for publishers that use Adsense. But if you sre hoping to get the maximum benefit from the feature the advice quoted above is well worth paying attention to.

Especially if you are using the new Advertise on this site feature offered by Adsense.

The question is, how far do you go in making your pages attractive to advertizers? And how do you go about doing that?

Is following the heat map enough?

What about editorial content, is there a style or manner of presentation that could make your site more attractive to advertizers using Site Targeting"?

What do you think about this?

[Frequent]

Since site targeting came on-line I too have been looking closely at the sites I am able to target and have been amazed by the absolutely terrible ad placement optimization some webmasters are running.

I have had to pass on many "dead on" targetted quality content sites because I know that I'll get plenty of impressions but no click-throughs. These people are likely making 1/10th (or less!) of what they could with adsense.

Freq---

[hunderdown]

What, exactly, are the "AdSense principles" for maximizing CTR--other than creating a page with no exits except through an AdSense ad, of course?

That post makes it sound like there's some list somewhere, but AFAIK what works on one site doesn't work on another....

[Frequent]

Well this is where I'd like them to start:

[google.com...]

Freq---

[hunderdown]

OK. I have consulted that page, and I bet many here have. What do you see publishers NOT doing? Based on discussions here, publishers seem to optimize frenetically. I have some personal limits to what I will do on my site, but even I've followed most of those tips.

Do you see a lot of ads at the bottoms of pages, in the wrong colors? Or is there no one problem, just a lot of different problems?

[Rodney]

Based on discussions here, publishers seem to optimize frenetically

I think what they are saying is that it seems like the sites they are seeing have not read the discussions here.

As weird as it may sound, there are a lot of publishers out there that have never heard of webmasterworld :)

Those new to online advertising, or used to CPM ad networks do things like hide the ads at the bottom or where people are not likely to see them. They don't do the things that the google tips page suggests (which is probably why Google keeps putting those types of pages out. Not for us, but for the thousands of publishers that don't know what they should be doing to earn more).

[hunderdown]

OK. I thought that they were addressing their comments to the members of this forum, not to the people NOT reading this forum, so I was hoping I might learn something new....

[Frequent]

Yes, I was referring to webmasters the world over who put up a site, are told by someone that they should put adsense on there to make some extra cash, and apparently close their eyes and insert the code.

They may have a high traffic site that generates them a couple bucks or an extra hundred a day with adsense. They are happy, but by just using the heatmap they could be making hundreds or thousands a day and even more if they went into a serious bout of test and tune.

Freq---

I would be willing to bet that not one of the sites I was referring to had ever seen the heatmap and they certainly aren't webmasterworld members.