I once went to a fashion show where each model wore the exact same black
outfit for the entire duration of the show. Boring? Hardly! The show was
intended to showcase platinum jewelry, and the outfits were designed to
enhance the jewelry — instead of distracting the audience.
You don’t have to make all the pages on your website identical (or black).
But you do want to make sure that the look of your page draws attention to
the ads — and makes them appear as attractive and as valuable as platinum
jewelry.
Many websites have strong graphic elements that catch the eye — usually at the expense of the AdSense units.
If you're using AdSense, be judicious in the selection of fonts, font size,
colors, images, tables and other visual aspects of your website.
Draw subtle attention to your AdSense units. Make them the stars of
your show!
4.2 Make T he B order Go !
You can more than DOUBLE your click-throughs with this one simple
tweak!
Even before the Internet, ads in newspapers and magazines were marked off
with a thick, heavy border. No wonder borders and boxes have come to
symbolize advertising messages.
It's always easier to work with a white background. If your page
background is white, you can instantly see the results with the ad next to the color palette.
Ads with promin ent borders make your pages look cluttered. They distract
the eye from the ad text, while marking off the ad blocks from the rest of the
content.
Google provides an extensive color palette in your administrative area. U se it
to tweak the look of your ads to suit your web page.
With just one simple click, you can match the color of your ad's border w ith
the background color of you r web page. When the border blends with the
background, it frees up loads of space. The page looks instantly neater and
the ads look more inviting.
Make sure you also pick a match ing background color for the ad. The ad's
background must match the page background on which the ad will appear.
If the ad appears in a table, match the table background color with the ad
background color.
The key is to blend the background and border color with the page, so that
the text looks like an integral part of your web content.
Don't forget to match the background color for your ad with the background color of your web page. Even with a matching border, the ad in the sticks out against the white background.
4.3 Text Is D esign To o!
That's right: the text size, font, color and the color of your ads must match
the other text elements. If the text color of the ads is the same as the text in
the body of you r page, it’ll help the ads blend into the site and make the
reader feel that you’ve endorsed them.
And if the size of the font in the ads is the same as the size of the main body
of the content, it will have the same effect: they’ll l ook l ike part of your site
and not something brought in by Google.
That’s the sort of blending that translates into clicks.
This 3-way matching(titles, text and background) can generate excellent click-through rates.
Too many text styles add clutter and can confuse your visitors. Instead, try
every legitimate way to make the ads look like a part of your web content.
In other words use the colors to make sure that your ads don't look like ads!
4.4 Blue Is Best
So you want to get rid of the border. You want to get your ads the same
color as the text on the rest of your page and the background matching the
background color of your Web page.
But what about the link itself, the line the user is actually going to click?
What color should that be?
That’s an easy one: blue.
I used to say that all the text in the ad should match the text on your page,
including the link. After seeing an article about the benefits of keepin g the
links blue — and testing extensively — I don’t say th at any more.
The logic is that users have come to expect links on websites to be blue. Just
as they expect stop signs to be red and warning signs to be yellow, so they
expect thei r links to blue.
That means people are more likely to click on a blue link than a link
in any other color.
The line in your AdSense code that sets the color of your link is the one that
says:
Google_color_link = “# color”;
“#color” is the h exadecimal number for the color you want to use. You
should make sure that number is #0000FF.
Keep your lin k blue and you can experience an increase in cli ck-throughs as
high as 25 percent!
4.5 Where Did My URL Go ?
You can change the color of your text and you can make sure that your li nks
scream, “I’m a FREE road to where you want to go!”
But you still have to display the U RL. It’s one of Google’s rules. But you don’t
have to display it in a way that people can see it.
One legitimate tri ck to make the click-through link less obtrusive is to change
the URL display color to match the text description color. Now the link will
blend in with the text description and the eye will be drawn to the hyperlink
instead of the U RL. Google provides these tools for you . Why not use them?
Note that the 728 x 90 leaderboard and the 468 x 60 banner do not display
the URL line by Google’s design. It is not a mistake and you will not get in
trouble for the URL not appearing w ith these ad blocks. It’s just the way it
is.
4.6 Deliberate Mismatching
When it comes to choosing colors, I recommend 3-way matching and using
blue for the links. But there is another strategy that you can use.
You can deliberately mismatch your ad colors and styles, provided you keep
it to the top of your page.
This distinction generates two powerful ' zones' and therefore two types of
experience for the visitor.
The first zone is always at the top of the first page, above the main site banner. The titles and text colors match colors found in the banner graphic heading.(Important — the URL links are hidden, so only certain text ads wil l
allow you to do this.)
The end result is that these ads, placed above the banner graphic look l ike key control points for your site and are just more likely to be clicked. The visitor feels that they are visiting another major area of that site.
4.7 Changing The Look Of Your Ads
The strategies I’ ve provi ded in this chapter will all help to improve your
clickthrough rates. That’s what happened when I used them and it’s w hat
happened when other people used them.
But one of the most important strategies you can use with AdSense i s to
experiment.
If you find that a slightly larger ad format gives you better results, for
example, then obviously, you should use the bigger one.
In the past, changing your ads meant copying the code and pasting it into
your site again.
Today, things are a bit easier than that.
When you create your ad code, you’ll be asked to give that code a n ame.
Make su re that name tells you exactly w here the ad will be placed and its
format.
Whenever you want to change the way an ad looks, you’ll be able to pu ll u p
that code on your AdSense center and make the changes. Your ad will be
updated automatically within the next ten minutes.
Unless you want to change the size of your ads. That you’ll still have to do
manually by pastin g in the new code.
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