Optimize Your AdSense Earnings
As a website owner wanting to show AdSense ads there are especially three things that will boost your revenue significantly and if you feel like you are not making the amount of money that you would assume your site could be making then be sure to check to see whether you are following these three golden rules first.
Rule number 1: Placement
It is extremely important that you ads are placed in a prominent place on your website. If you are placing them where people are not looking they are not going to click the ads and you will not be making any money.
The best place to show AdSense ads are in the top left (below any header graphic you might be using) and in the top center of the page. Be sure to check that people are able to see your ads without having to scroll down the page (this is also known as "above the fold").
Rule number 2: Link Color
It has been proven time and time again that blue links are clicked more often than any other color of links. This is probably because we have all learned from the time when the Internet was invented that links are blue and that is just how it is. Our eyes and our minds are programmed to look for text that is blue so that we can click on it.
You might argue that the blue color doesn't fit the design of your site and I am not arguing with you on that. All I am telling you is that blue links are the best bet you can make for getting a higher amount of clicks on the ads.
Rule number 3: Targeted Text
The AdSense ads that Google is showing on your site are solely determined but Google's software. It will look at the title of your page/post and the text that you have written on that page. This means that if you write a text about a lot of different topics from keeping your garden free of weeds, over how to fix your car and finally ending up how to make more money on your job, the software will have a very difficult time figuring out what your text is really about and it will therefore most likely display ads that are not necessarily relevant to your visitors.
If you instead try to keep each post/page/article within a very narrow topic and use as many different words that you can come up with that are common within that topic the software will have a lot less trouble figuring out what your article is about and will therefore display ads that are laser targeted to that specific topic. This also means that the people reading what you have written (it is assumed that they are reading it because they have an interest) will be presented with ads that are a lot more relevant to them and they are therefore very likely to click on them to see what they are about. That means that you'll be making more money!!
Bonus rule
Whether you believe the three rules above or not you definitely should test to see whether you are actually leaving money on the street. The golden rule (or what I call the Bonus rule) is to always test, test and test again. It is not certain that blue links or top-left ad placements will be the best performing solution for your particular website but if you don't test you'll never know and you will very likely be leaving money on the table.