I’ve just finished making some changes to my blogs, including this one. See if you can spot them (assuming you’ve been there before, of course :)).
Can’t spot them? Here they are:
- removed the borders around the entire pages, the individual posts, the sidebar, etc.. - I think that just that minor change has made my blogs look much more “fluid”, less “rigid”.
- reduced the importance of the ad in the header, which, anyway, according to Google, isn’t a good spot anyway. In some blogs, I removed it altogether.
- in a couple of blogs, I removed the ads in the sidebar - again, they’re not usually very successful. Left it in Garrafive de 5 Litros, my brother and cousin’s humor blog, as a big vertical ad like that one can work, as long as it doesn’t make the sidebar too big.
- began using my real name in some of the blogs, instead of “Dehumanizer”. People tend to be more talkative, and comment more, if they can call the blogger by name.
- finally, I added some ads between posts in the main page. These don’t feel as much “not part of the content” as those at the top, or the sidebar.
I really think they look better now, and, as for the ad results, the next days should prove interesting…
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I’ve been playing around with layout and ads, too.
Lately my traffic has been so terrible (40 hits/day, or so) that I’ve not been seeing any clicks on any ads (I’m a relative newcomer, and am having trouble getting linkbacks, so that’s the traffic impact); however, I heavily analyzed my ad clicks during my high-traffic periods (particularly during hurricane Rita). It seems the “top” ad unit (formerly 768x, now 468x) was resulting in the highest number of clicks, by a landslide. The sidebar ad unit was resulting in barely enough to keep it around, the adsense for search had netted me all of nine cents, and the google links between posts were receiving precisely zero clicks.
I moved the google links up top to my “subheader navigation” space - a trick I’ve seen a lot of people use, lately. I had to change the size of my “header” unit when I changed layouts, and I changed the units between entries to chitika, only (all google units (except link units) roll over to Chitika instead of PSAa). I also added a google unit beside my comment form. Amazingly, everyone I’ve asked says it’s not overkill, as the ads flow very nicely within the site, and don’t detract from the average user’s experience.
Anywho, I’m talking too much. Hello, enjoy the blog, read the feed, etc..