How To Increase AdSense CTR For Proxy Sites

I recently went through all of my proxy sites and analyzed the CTR so I could find out which sites are under performing and improve them. If you’re not familiar, CTR stands for ‘Click Through Rate’ and is a ratio of how many times an ad is displayed to how many times it is actually clicked. Most proxy webmasters find their numbers are typically low, even less than 1% in many cases. I have manged to get anywhere from 2% to 6% depending on the month or the day, which is nearly unheard of in this business.

Here are my tips for you:

Use the maximum allowed 3 AdSense units per page. 1 or 2 is not enough.Remove all footer ads and possibly place them higher up on the page. Having to scroll down to see them drastically reduces the CTR.The higher up something is on a page, the more likely it is to get a response.Use 728×90 leaderboard units at the very top.Make sure every site has one large unit at the very top, even if it is only 468×60.Place two 336×280 large rectangle units next to each other. Place them above your URL form but below the top ad.Only use text ads. People click them the most. Avoid the graphical and text/graphical combination options.Place link units instead of ad units above and/or below the URL form. Example here.In some cases, you might want to replace a theme completely, especially for your sites with the lowest CTR.

I have found these themes perform the best from my experience:

SEO Optimized (Glype) – 2.08% CTR for October 2010.
Orangeproxy (PHPRoxy) 2.67% CTR for October 2010.

Another trick I use is to watch my sites to see if irrelevant advertisements show up. I check the URL and then block it by logging into AdSense and going to ‘AdSense Setup’ –> ‘Competitive Ad Filter’. Read the instructions, then enter one address per line into the form and save the changes. One particularly good idea is to remove services that sell blocking and filtering software since this is the opposite of what proxy users are looking for. Here are some that I recommend adding to the list due to their lack of relevance:

bloxx.combtdiamondip.ccdelocitie.commy-windows.comnetworksecuritydegree.comsophossecurity.comveintreatmentcenter.comwebwatchernow.comwww.fwanalyzer.comwww.gfi.com/web-blockingyourticker.com

You can always check your own sites for unrelated ones and add them to the blocklist. Do not click your own ads to determine the URL as this is against the terms of service. Just look to see if it’s displayed next to the ad.