Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have to agree with jomaxx - where on earth will you fit the content? Nothing worse than a wall of ads. I click straight out. The other thing that strikes me is that you haven't looked at the Google heat map that shows where the best results are usually obtained.
I know you haven't asked for a critique, but I'd like to offer a couple of suggestions based on my recent experiences that may be of interest.
Regarding the tables, why have a fixed width? If you set the table width to 100% you fill up the browser window of whatever resolution the visitor has the screen set to. I personally don't like sites that assume cartain resolutions, and you have to scroll left and right to see the content, or sites that have a fixed width of page as a lot of blogs are doing nowadays. But that's just my personal point of view.
I know it's a rotten learning curve, but you can achieve the same effect with css. Although tables have their uses, css might load faster. You might like to think about the sheer number of images and scripts on the page as well. A lot of your visitors have dialup connections, and won't wait for a page full of graphics to load. I've recently gone through an exercise of trimming my main earnings page to the bone so that it will load faster - especially on slow connections. The result has been an increase in my serps position, and clicks/ctr have gone up by about 30%.
The AdSense Terms Of Service are real and important - read them, understand them and comply with them and you should not have a problem.
It may be the not every violation is stamped on every time, but if you read many of the threads on the AdSense forum you will see that it frequently hurts to ignore the TOS - sometimes permanently.
Design your page for the surfer. Provide content for the surfer.
Then start planning where to put your ads.
I don't know who to believe alothough most folks all have DSL if not broadband and anyone using a dial up is beyond my comprehension. Why even have a computer if all you have is dial up? It's like owning a car and not driving over $35 in order to conserve gas. Just get the best speeds and youre off & running. If they cannot afford higher than 56K, they sure aint gonna invest much in buying stuff online much anyway, that's the way I look at it.
Don't discount dial-up so easily...
I see in my logs quite a number of visitors that still have dial-up as this example format:
dialup-1.234.567.890.diala.cityb.levelc.example.net
The "city" in the example is not a small city but a well known large metropolitan area. There are still many parts of the country where for one reason or another dial-up is still all that is available, and some areas where that will never change due to terrain, sparse population, etc.
In my own case, dial-up was all that was available at my house until just one year ago (I live in my state's capitol city too). My only decision to make was which ISP should I use. Sure I switched when DSL was made available, but I had the need for speed.
Some of my co-workers that have DSL available still use dial-up by choice (we are all IT Technicians). Why? Their only use for the internet at home is a small amount of shopping and email. One fellow says he doesn't want to see much of a computer in his off-work hours, he sees enough of them at work. Of this group of half a dozen IT workers, I'm the only one who has made websites. Only one other has the slightest clue about HTML as she has had a class in it and has had to work on a very few intranet help pages.
Also, consider that Granny & Grandpa are probably on a fixed income and cannot afford more than dial-up for their needs. Nor do they need the speed, it's already quite fast and amazing to their way of thinking.
but my point is that while on dial-up I furnished my home from the web spending thousands of dollars. So don't even begin to think people don't have the money for shopping if they are on a slow connection.
Ann
I watched as my brother uploaded a huge file for me recently from a dialup connection, and believe me, my broadband is 50-100X faster than dialup. There's really no comparison.
Actually Google ads had nothing to do with it. I went to the engine knowing what I wanted to look up. most times I found it and ordered from the web but sometimes, for a local store branch, I would print out all the info plus pic and call the store giving them make, model and color, pay over the phone and have my item in a few days.
This way I could do something in my home that I did not have the staying power to do in town----walk the stores and shop! :)
Ann
