Some readers were surprised, and some did not even believe that with my attendance of 500 people. last month I received more than 60 dollars in contextual advertising income from this blog.

Well, it wasn’t always like this, and I, like many others, started with very modest numbers - the general CTR for ads was at first in the region of 0.5-06% and the income was corresponding. But I am a fast learner and I like to experiment, so in a few months I managed to increase this figure by 3 times. About what caused the growth, I will write below.

To begin with, here is a screen from adsense by months, so as not to be unfounded:

As you can see, this month I even exceeded 2% and in 4 days more than $ 10 came across to me, despite the fact that the topic is not the most expensive, the average cost per click is 16 cents.

1. Be sure to install the Google Analytics metric and enable the ability to collect statistics for AdSense

There is an integration feature. Thus you will receive detailed information by the effectiveness of each page on which contextual advertising is located:

Thus, for example, I had a good CTR on one in the region of 2-3%, while on another entry point with the same theme and good traffic, the CTR was only 0.5 - 0.7%. Comparing them, I realized that the location of the block with advertising in the text in the second version was not very successful.

Simply by changing the position of the ad in the text I increased CTR and revenue from AdSense contextual advertising on this page 3 times. If this is a blog, then I advise you to place ads in the text between the beginning and middle of the article, of course these are just my observations, you may have other effective places.

I also advise you to pay attention to the column Effective cost per thousand impressions - here you will find out on which pages you have the most expensive clicks, increase traffic to them means increase income.

2. Experiment with ad design

Try several strategies. Make the ad design look like your website design, same link and background colors ( just do not overdo it, do not forget about the rules of the system). Then make your ad blocks contrast as much as possible with the design of the site so that they attract attention at first sight.

Then compare the click-through rates of these options over time, for example a week of tests for each option, and pick the most interesting one.

3. Try different ad block formats

I, in turn, tried a dozen options on this site) But I can say with accuracy that those that Adsense itself advises in the recommended list are really the most effective. And if the design of your site allows you to use them, then start with them.

4. Location of advertising blocks on the site

Again, experiments and more experiments.

I now have 1 block under the site header, 1 in the sidebar and 1 I insert into the article. I also tried to do it after the article, but it almost did not give clicks.

Wrap your ad code in a div block and you can position it however you like. You can make text wrap around from different sides, you can center it, as I have for example. It all depends on your design and the design of the blocks themselves.

Check the effectiveness in the Adsense statistics, in the Reports tab. Of course, the higher the block is located to the top of the page, the more people he will be seen and more likely to be clicked on.

5. Number of ad units

At the moment I have stopped at 3 blocks. Two of them are available on all pages ( under the header and in the sidebar), and one only in the articles, which I insert manually.

I noticed such a trick - when at some point I had 4 blocks on the page, then one just stopped working. I don’t know, maybe it’s written somewhere in the Google rules, but I understand that there shouldn’t be more than 3 on one page. I don't recommend less than two.

6. Type of ads

There are 3 options to choose from - text, media and both at once.

Now you know how to increase your income in contextual advertising Adsense, so go ahead - act)

Updated 08/01/2019 10:16 (UTC+3)

How to increase CTR and why your site needs it

CTR is an indicator of clickability on links that are present in the issuance of search engines. For example, even a project with a perfectly designed structure will have a low CTR if the snippet does not motivate to make a transition. And if you take into account all the factors for CTR growth, you can get more traffic from search engines, even without being in the TOP-3 or TOP-5. CTR is calculated as a percentage. The calculation is as follows: clicks must be divided by impressions and multiplied by 100. You can track the indicator for each of the requests in Yandex.Webmaster and Google Search Console. To increase the indicator, you can conduct several experiments and choose one of the proven methods (or use them in combination).

Attractive meta tags

Meta tags need to be optimized for keywords is one of the unshakable rules of internal optimization. It must be observed, while not forgetting about creativity: make meta tags attractive, calling for certain actions, solving someone's problems. It is important that the snippet complements the page title. Here are some good examples:

Special characters in snippets

Yandex robots now do not pay attention to the contents of the description meta tag, so you need to work hard to display the necessary part of the page content in the snippet. One way is to increase the occurrence of the main key in the sentence that you want to display in the snippet. Fortunately, Google uses the information from the description. For Google, you can use special characters in unicode format by simply inserting them into description. Options that can be obtained as a result:

Adding contacts

Contact information includes address, business hours, telephone number. This is very convenient way display, only for some reason units resort to it. But such information will significantly increase the number of transitions.


How to customize the display of such a snippet? First, add a resource to Yandex.Directory and determine the rationality of the site in Webmaster. This rule applies only to commercial projects.

Page URLs

If the site has a breadcrumb structure, Yandex can display the navigation chain. Moreover, it will additionally highlight the keys from the request.

Using microformats

The specific data that you specify using microformats and Schema.org semantic markup allows you to perfectly customize your snippets. Settings are available for certain types of pages: for example, recipes, products, contacts, and so on. Here are examples of well-implemented snippets:

The abbreviation CTR stands for click through rate and translated from English means click through rate. It is one of the indicators in advertising and Internet marketing. CTR is calculated as the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions of an ad or banner. Measured in percentage.

CTR is calculated using a very simple formula.

CTR= Number of clicks per period / number of impressions per period* by 100%.

You can calculate CTR as for the whole advertising campaign, and for individual ads or display sites. At the same time, it is not necessary to calculate it manually. Just go to the advertising system and see the statistics. Everywhere CTR is calculated automatically.

How to find CTR in advertising

Checking CTR in Yandex.Direct

We go to the main page of the service, scroll down the page and click "Statistics for all campaigns".

We'll see total score CTR for all campaigns running both on search and in the affiliate network. To see the click-through rate for each campaign separately, scroll down a little more and go to the campaign by clicking on it, and then click "Show detailed statistics on ads" to find out the CTR for each ad separately.

Checking CTR in Google AdWords

This screenshot shows the CTR of search campaigns.

Please note that for the Display Network (Display Network) and the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN), the indicators are significantly lower than for search campaigns.

We look at CTR in the VK advertising account

Accordingly, in the same way, you can go deeper, see statistics and CTR for various ads or individual creatives.

For SEO, as for one of the types of customer acquisition, there is also a click through rate or CTR, only it is more multidimensional. When you click on one of the lines in the search results, several factors affect:

• display position (from 1 to 100 positions);
• the number of advertisements on request;
• the snippet that the search engine generated for the user (PS does not always show the Title and Description that you specified).

How to see the CTR of a site or site page in search engines

To do this, we need to use the Yandex and Google webmaster panels.

For example, to see the CTR of a particular page in , we go to the service page. Next, in the "Search queries" and "Last queries" section, turn on the filter by URL, enter the page address and click "Filter".

In the same report, you can see the display position.

Where to get ideas for hypotheses?

• look at competitors' ads;
• brainstorm;
• ask your customers what is most important to them when choosing and add it to the text of your ads.

How to formulate a hypothesis, examples.

Example 1 I believe that the click-through rate will increase if we put in the ad a price lower than that of competitors.

Example 2 I believe that the click-through rate will increase if the promotion is promoted in advertising.

It’s better to check not only how changes in ads will affect CTR, but also how it will affect conversions, sales, and concluded contracts. Therefore, further do the analysis of efficiency and leave the best option.

Every advertiser who at least once in his life has encountered the placement of a publication on the Internet is familiar with the term "CTR". For users who are working with online ad promotion for the first time, you need to know about CTR and what it is, its importance for website and product promotion, and how to calculate the indicator.

What is CTR

The Internet is a medium that offers many possibilities. One of them is to track the useful actions of users. It is also available to an advertiser using sites to place an advertisement.

The formula for calculating CTR is as follows: number of clicks / number of impressions × 100%.

The main task of the CTP is to show how the publication works and is interesting for the user. There is no point in spending money on advertising if it does not work.

As you can see from the above example, the advertiser used the publication settings quite competently, which prevented him from losing money for impressions. What if the funds spent on advertising are gone, and the efficiency factor is close to zero?

CPA is another term used alongside CTR. The possibility of cooperation with an intermediary that provides access to advertising sites, paying only for the useful actions of users. By choosing the CPA mode, the user determines the amount for advertising and sets the price for a useful click on the ad. Of course, in this case it will be much higher. But, you should be extremely careful. In this case, there is a chance to completely lose money for nothing, since there may not be any efficiency from transitions at all.

What is considered a good CTR

A high click-through rate indicates that the publication is interesting to the user.

But it all depends on the format and type of advertisement. Let's say a good CTR for a banner is 3%. For contextual advertising, the rate of transitions is higher, since it is shown to a user who is interested in information. What should be the coefficient for the ad? The average CTR is 10-20%, you can consider a good CTR when it reaches 30%. The prognosis for indicators below these can be considered disappointing.

For example, in Yandex Direct it is possible to generate reports, including those based on CTR

Why raise the score? What does CTR affect?

• Increasing CTR increases provided that by advertisement interested users have passed. Of course, the audience that reacted to the publication is not yet buyers. But if you customize the ad according to or show it on thematic sites, the chances of getting potential customers will increase significantly.
• The higher the CTP of an ad, the more good sites will want to show it.
• A good page CTR affects the growth of its owner's income.
• Ads with poor performance (usually below 0.5%) are reluctant to place advertisers.
• If your ad has good click-through rates, you can lower your cost per impression, saving you a lot of money. After all, sites are chasing not only high pay, but also high-quality publications.

What influences the growth of click-through rate and how to increase it

The text of your ad should be interesting and creative.

• Choose sites that are thematically similar to the ad. A user who is looking for a specific product will bypass ads for other products.
• Use targeting by selecting multiple customization options. Let it be a little more expensive at first, but the ad will be seen by the right user, who may be interested in it.
• Experts recommend using key phrases when compiling the title and description of the product in the publication. Highlight these words in bold and they will be noticed.
• Check out Yandex statistics showing Frequent queries users. Use similar wording when writing your title.
• It is recommended to turn off the word auto-selection service in order to exclude impressions to users who were looking for a slightly different product.
• Carefully work with the ad text. An interesting way of presenting information attracts the audience.

Targeted advertising is one of the main ways to increase CTR

Proper ad setup will help not only increase CTR, but also increase page conversion by attracting an interested user to the site.

Of course, CTR is important for an advertiser. It has a chance to assess the user's interest in their product, make a forecast of the effectiveness of advertising, make timely adjustments to the ad, and analyze whether the price for displaying the publication is correct.