There are blogs that performs extremely well with Adsense Ads and there are blogs which fares terribly. It depends on the niches you are on and for a blog like this which some calls a meta blog, Adsense seldom earns much. For one, the CPC for related keywords is very low and two, most who reads such blogs are bloggers who they themselves are probably using Adsense in their own blogs.
Of course the fact remains that if you have a vast pool of readers you will still be able to see some decent earnings from CPMs, but that can only be realized with thousands of visitors daily. For an average blog, the hope still lies with the number of clicks.
Trying Out The New Adsense Format
Adsene recently announced a new format for displaying text Ads in their Adsesne blocks. I have seen some of it in action prior to the announcement and felt that the new way might actually improve click through rates.
Though I have been toying with Adsense on and off for this blog, I have decided to give it another go and see if the new way of displaying Ads will indeed increase the number of clicks.
Inserting Adsense In The Frugal Theme
I found the best way to place Adsense Ads in the Frugal Theme is by way of using the Custom widgets. First, set up your widgets in your Feature Options Page. Select one of the four widgets available, give it a name, select “hook” and a location to hook the widget, For example, the Adsense banner here is hooked after the navigation bar. Then, head over to the Feature Design to give the widget some basic styling.
When you have done that, go to your Widgets dashboard and see your newly created custom widgets at the bottom of all the default ones. It will be represented by the name that you have given the widget. To add Aedsense, simple drag in a text widget and paste in all your Adsense codes.
What Is Adsense Targeting
All Adsense gurus will advise you to target the Ads in your blog. This basically means the Ads displayed will be relevant to your post contents. In essence, this will naturally increase your click through rate because when a visitors comes seeking for specific information, the chances of them clicking on a Ad that is relevant to what they are seeking is very high.
Also known as Adsense Section Targeting, you will have to add a line of code in the beginning of your post to tell the Adsense Bots to start gathering information about what the post is about. Then you will have to add another line of codes at the end of your past to tell the Adsense bots to stop. With that information, the Adsense bots can then decide what Ads to display on that post.
Without Adsense targeting, adsense Bots will be crawling all over your blog and all kinds of Ads will start appearing in your post because the Bots will be picking keywords from all the other posts.
Adsense Targeting For The Frugal Theme
To use Adsense targeting for the Frugal Theme, we use the custom functions php file located under Appearance – Editor. Open that file and under whatever you already have in there, copy and paste in these codes
//adsense targeting functions
function open_adsense_targting(){
echo "<!-- google_ad_section_start -->";
}
function close_adsense_targting(){
echo "<!-- google_ad_section_end -->";
}
add_action('frugal_hook_before_postarea','open_adsense_targting' );
add_action('frugal_hook_after_postarea', 'close_adsense_targting');
It will take sometime before the effect will be seen. Adsense purists swears that Adsense targeting works. We shall see.
