1. Making it unpredictable and non-typical

If you look at the top three publishers you’ll find that they’ve cleverly randomized the ads. On every section/category and even pages, the Ads show up in different colors and different units. The colors are sometimes blend in with the theme, but sometimes set to Google defaults. I assume they must be playing around with a lot of channels and experimenting with different positions/placement before locking in on one color/position for an Ad.
2. Pick up a profitable niche

This may sound cliché but it’s a fact. And this is proved by the top publishers league. If you look at the top publishers featured by AdSense you’ll see that all of them are in the high-CTR niche.. travel, finance etc. Niches like technology/blogging etc are low paying niches and don’t do well on AdSense but with about 1/4th the effort you can get more revenue on these niches.
3. Make the Ads as relevant as possible

You’ll see that top publishers have taken all efforts in making the ads that show up as relevant as possible. With tools such as section targeting and Ad planner, all you need is to do some experiments to tweak the codes making the ads relevant.
4. Leverage on unique content

If you take a look at the top publisher websites, you’ll see that all of them have loads of content. They aren’t the typical MFA (Made For AdSense) websites which have less number of pages and more number of ads. Instead, these websites have real content that users find helpful. The ads are basically complementing the content with the relevant links.
5. Adhere to AdSense policies

All of the top AdSense publisher websites adhere strictly to AdSense policies. In fact, they utilize the policies and allowed rules to the maximum, that there are no rocks left unturned.
6. Show off your content

Though AdSense recommends that you place your ads above the fold and use big rectangle ads for higher CTR’s, this needn’t be true for all websites. Play around with different Ad positions and make sure your content is highlighted more than the ads. This is not a thumb rule but I think it all depends on what content you have and how your users behave.
7. Use all the tools in the inventory

All the top AdSense publishers are experts at what they are doing but what made them make the best out of Ads are the tools. Google provides lot of amazing tools to track, maintain and make the ads/content efficient on websites. Use them, they are better than blank guesses – which most of us use.

There are several other points that you can learn from the top publishers websites, just take a look around and you’ll see what they’ve done. Many of those points can be integrated to your websites too if you’d like to increase your AdSense earnings. But the important thing to note here is that, every website has its own audience and audience behavior is unique for each niche. Most part of your exercises should be on how to match their demand and requirements, and once you have a perfect match, you’ll see your CTRs grow.

Related Posts

***