For those of you who have trouble making any money with your Adsense revenues, you might want to try the above heat map.  And to those who have been following my older Adsense heat maps from last year, you might want to update it with the one I am showing you here because through the years, I have gotten better at improving my Adsense revenues through better placements.

Now, this map can be seen on the single articles pages of my main blog Zedomax.com (such as this one).

Let me explain why I made this Adsense optimization heat map.  It looks so simple yet there’s a lot of research and time I have put into this so please bear with me.

The best performing ads are (based on my 3+ years with Adsense and driving 30M pageviews) is the top left corner right after your blog post headline.

Why?

Because that’s where people’s eyes go first.   Also, if you have a sidebar on the left side or you have sidebars on both sides of your website, that’s fine too.  I have other blogs where sidebar is on the left side but people will still look for the content side, just make sure your ads are on the “left” side of the content side.

Also, you can embed your ads so they are integrated with the rest of your content but I usually don’t do that.

Why?

You want your readers to really focus on the ads first, just like TV ads.  If you have content around your ads, this will cause ad blindness more often than not based on my testing.  For some, it may work well, for longer articles.

So, have your ads clear of content.  You can put your content above or below the ads.  The main point is that you want to have focus.

If you think that will not look good for the design of your website, that’s fine too but just know that maximum revenues are achieved when you can make readers completely focused at the task at hand, that of reading ads first then content.

Why do I have no ads on this blog?

Ads are great for making money on sites with some good level of web traffic.  If you aren’t getting at least 1000 unique users per day, you shouldn’t really aggressively advertise but rather work to get more web traffic and loyal readers.

Trust me, I don’t even like putting too many ads myself and if you put ads on blogs/websites that don’t even get 1000 unique visitors per day, you are mostly likely shooting yourself in the foot.

I know, I know, you want to make money right away but you still also need to focus on building a readership and web traffic to a level.

Plus, for example let’s say you put ads all over your website that gets 200 unique visitors per day, you aren’t gonna get that much clicks anyways plus your revenue will be a lot smaller because you have such small number of visitors.

I have found that having at least 1000 unique visitors per day is a good rule of thumb to go by before you even start putting ads.  Of course, depending on your niche, this could be slightly lower, maybe 500.

This blog itself currently gets less than 1000 unique visitors per day, I will put ads on here someday but not until I reach the initial 1000.

Just use your common sense and don’t put ads on your site if you are not ready.  Or at least start with ads after the content.

Now, let me go on with the Adsense map here.  You will see that I have put a rectangle Adsense block, either of the sizes 336×280, 300×250, or 300×250.  Try to use the biggest ad size that will fit as bigger sizes mean higher revenues.

You can also put “private” ads on the right side of the Adsense ad to “fill” the blank space if you want.  But make sure you test and it doesn’t affect your Adsense CPC. Depending on your niche, this might differ.  In my case, filling the space on the right sometimes will lower my CPCs or sometimes it will raise it.  Just make sure to test both options and you will find the right combo.

Now, after the first Adsense rectangle block, I have content, perhaps 1-3 sentences.  I have used custom code for my Wordpress theme to put another Adsense rectangle block after the 1-3 sentences.

Why?

Because if you want to achieve the highest CPCs and higher reader-attention for the ads, you want to place your ads as high as they can be. (if your goal is to make the maximum revenue)

After all the content, I use Google AdManager and Adsdaq to serve private affiliate ads or CPM ads.   This is the worst performing spaces for Adsense so I put my private/CPM ads there.   Don’t put more ads there because it will saturate your Adsense revenues.  I try to stick with 2 big Adsense rectangles at most.

Don’t put Adsense rectangle ads on Sidebar

I don’t put any Adsense rectangle ads on the sidebar because simply they are the worst performers due to ad blindness.  People can easily recognize that ads on the sidebar are ads and will simply ignore it.  You can try testing it but I bet your results will be like what I said.  One more thing, don’t put ads on your header either unless it performs much better than the first Adsense rectangle.  I highly doubt it but you can always test it.

KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid)

When it comes to user experience of actually browsing your site, you need to keep your ads to a minimum.  Although I have a lot of ads on Zedomax.com, you will see that ads are “clearly” divided from my content.  You need to make it easy for users to distinguish ads from real content while you place your ads where readers will pay attention most. This keeps your readers as happy as possible while letting you maximize your revenue potential.

So, that’s it, you just need two big square blocks for your main article pages. No need for any extra Adsense blocks because you want to place your ads where people will read the most.  Otherwise you will saturate our own Adsense revenues because you are offering more ad spaces.

I used to have like a whole bunch of ads as seen in my very first Adsense heat map here but I am making more money now by having less ads but placing them higher on my blog.

Extra – Category Pages

Above heat map is for your article pages, where the actual contents are.  Now, for category pages, you can place more ads and customize it.

For my Zedomax.com blog, I actually rearranged my blog theme to have 1 left side bar, 1 ad block, and 1 content block, which is 3 columns.  You can see an example here.

Why a different layout for Category Pages?

I don’t want ad blindness so I have completely changed my theme so it looks “fresh”.  Plus I have blended my ads so they are informational and offer more options for users since they are not trying to read just “one article” rather they are trying to find something.  This means ads could potentially be more helpful if your readers don’t find the content they are looking for.

I won’t get into the details of how I did my category pages but it’s an example that you can make your website into different layouts for different sections.  By having fresh look to your category pages, you can avoid ad blindness and also offer the readers more options to choose from.

You don’t have to copy my style but if your theme is same everywhere throughout your site, you might want to look into giving it a fresh look for certain pages such as the category page.

I can tell you that my category pages perform 2-3 times better than before, where it was the same as my article pages.

Should you use Chitika along with Adsense ads?

In my previous heat maps, I told you that Chitika was a great source of revenue.  Based on years of testing, I have found out the opposite it true.  You can easily saturate your own Adsense revenue when using both Adsense and Chitika because Chitika ads will sabotage your CPC.   Just make sure to use 1 of them, either Adsense or Chitika but don’t mix them together as you will only be shooting yourself in the foot.  You can read my full in-depth analysis of that here.

Well, good luck and if you are having trouble or you want me to review your ad placements, you can always e-mail me at zedomax[at]gmaildotcom, tweet me @zedomax, or leave a comment.   I will be glad to help you as much as I can. (for free! hurray!)

Bonus – Show ad to search engine traffic only!

If you simply believe that above heat map will not make your website look good, here’s an alternative.  Instead of putting ads where they “look good” but will worsen your Adsense revenues (such as the sidebar), just use the above map but only show ads to your search engine traffic so you don’t annoy your regular readers with ads, see more on that here. AdSense, AdSense, adsense heat map, adsense placement map, Advertisements, Blog DIY, Blog Training, Blogging, cpc optimized, Make Money Online, marketing, placement map, PPC