3.1 Design your website to Highlight AdSense

I once went to a fashion show where each model wore the exact same blackoutfit for the entire duration of the show. Boring? Hardly! The show wasintended to showcase platinum jewelry, and the outfits were designed toenhance 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 tothe ads — and makes them appear as attractive and as valuable as platinumjewelry.

Many websites have strong graphic elements that catch the eye —usually at the expense of the AdSense units.

3.2 Make the border go!

You can more than DOUBLE your click-through's with this one simpletweak!

Even before the Internet, ads in newspapers and magazines were marked offwith a thick, heavy border. No wonder borders and boxes have come tosymbolize advertising messages.

Ads with prominent borders make your pages look cluttered. They distractthe eye from the ad text, while marking off the ad blocks from the rest of the content.

With just one simple click, you can match the color of your ad's border withthe background color of your web page. When the border blends with thebackground, it frees up loads of space. The page looks instantly neater andthe ads look more inviting.

Make sure you also pick a matching background color for the ad. The ad'sbackground must match the page background on which the ad will appear.If the ad appears in a table, match the table background with the adbackground. The key is to blend the background and border color with thepage, so that the text looks like an integral part of your web content.

3.3 Text is Design too!

That's right: the text size, font, color and the color of your ads must matchthe other text elements. If the text color of the ads is the same as the text inthe body of your page, it’ll help the ads blend into the site and make thereader feel that you’ve endorsed them.

And if the size of the font in the ads is the as the size of the main body of thecontent, it will have the same effect: they’ll look like part of your site and notsomething brought in by Google.

That’s the sort of blending that translates into clicks.

You can see this on my blog. I’m running a test where I’ve changed the titlecolor of the ads to match the color of the titles on the text. I’ve also matchedthe text color of the ads to the color of the site text and the background ofthe ads to the background of the page. (I could also change the size of thefont and see what that does to my CTR.)

This 3-way matching (titles, text and background) can generate excellentclick-through rates.

Too many text styles add clutter and can confuse your visitors. Instead, tryevery 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!

3.4 Blue Is Best

So you want to get rid of the border. You want to get your ads the samecolor as the text on the rest of your page and the background matching thebackground 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 keeping thelinks blue — and testing extensively — I don’t say that any more.

The logic is that users have come to expect links on websites to be blue. Justas they expect stop signs to be red and warning signs to be yellow, so theyexpect their links to blue.

That means people are more likely to click on a blue link than a linkin 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 hexadecimal number for the color you want to use. Youshould make sure that number is #0000FF.

Keep your link blue and you can experience an increase in click-throughs ashigh as 25 percent!

3.5 Where did my URL go?

You can change the color of your text and you can make sure that your linksscream, “I’m a FREE road to where you want to go!”

But you still have to display the URL. It’s one of Google’s rules. But you don’thave to display it in a way that people can see it.

One legitimate trick to make the click-through link less obtrusive is to changethe URL display color to match the text description color. Now the link willblend in with the text description and the eye will be drawn to the hyperlinkinstead of the URL. 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 displaythe url line by Google’s design. It is not a mistake and you will not get introuble for the url not appearing with these ad blocks. It’s just the way it is.

3.6 Deliberate Mismatching

When it comes to choosing colors, I recommend 3-way matching and usingblue for the links. But there is another strategy that you can use.

You can deliberately mismatch your ad colors and styles, provided you keepit to the top of your page.

This distinction generates two powerful 'zones' and therefore two types ofexperience for the visitor.

The first zone is always at the top of the first page, above the main sitebanner. The titles and text colors match colors found in the banner graphicheading. (Important — the URL links are hidden, so only certain text ads willallow you to do this.)

The end result is that these ads, placed above the banner graphic look likekey control points for your site and are just more likely to be clicked. Thevisitor feels that they are visiting the another major area of that site.