I made two changes to my blog, and I was surprised to notice that my CPC rates are now 5-10x what they were. What did I do? First I added AdSense section targeting, and second, I removed advertising from the page.

AdSense section targeting allows you to specifically exactly where Google should be scanning your page to deliver targeted ads. The entire reason AdSense is so effective is because the advertisements are meant to be targeted to the reader and the context that they have an interest about in the first place. The more targeted, the higher the click-through-rates, and more than likely more money to be made. Rather than just putting the standard AdSense code on your page, you can wrap you the content you want to either target or filter out using section targeting. If you want Google to target a specific area (for example the main content of your post), simply wrap it around this code:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>

Write your content here

<!– google_ad_section_end –>

If you want to filter out specific sections of your page, you can wrap those in this code:

<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>

Write your content here

<!– google_ad_section_end(weight=ignore) –>

The second thing I did was simply remove two of the three AdSense spots that I had on the site. I had a 468×60 on the top of the posts, a 160×600 on the sidebar, and a 468×60 on the bottom of the posts. I only kept the 468×60 on the top for now, and I noticed that the ads are much better, and my CPC rates have been averaging over $1 a click. Previously, I’d be lucky to get 25 cents. Taking other AdSense ads off of the page can make a huge difference in CPC rates because Google can only fulfill so many spots, and each one is worth less. This reason is why some people will limit Google advertising to limited spots and use other types of ads in other spots in order to maximize revenue. Of course, you should be doing some testing to see what works best for you.

SmashingMagazine is the king of websites for building compilation lists of some of the coolest stuff on the web. Their newest guide is a list of Google AdSense facts, FAQs, and tools. For somebody like me that hasn’t had much experience with AdSense, I’m trying to take in as much as possible in order to make it as effective as possible for myself. On top of that, I use AdWords for two of my businesses, so it’s always good to see how things work from the other side of the fence.

They have compiled twenty quotes that will help you do things like place your ads on your site so that the click-through rates are higher.

??Format is important for multiple ad units, display your ad units where repeat users will notice them, place a leaderboard immediately after the last post.?

There are some other great links for other resources. For example I found a new tool that I installed for Firefox which displays your AdSense statistics in the status bar:

There is some great stuff on the site, and will provide hours of good information.