How To Choose The Best Colors And Fonts

Neutral, dark colors such as black, maroon, dark blue, dark green and olive, etc. work the best for me. Stay away from “exotic” and light colors.ALWAYS keep the background color for the main body white. White background, black text is the tried and tested combination across the internet.Don’t mess with it.I always keep the links in the main body blue and underlined. What shade of blue you use is entirely your decision, but I prefer a darker shade (the standard blue is #0000FF).In the sidebar, I keep all the links white and underlined. Visited...

The Layouts Exp2 and 3

Exp2The above layout is great for mini-sites with just a handful of pages. What about larger sites with 30+ pages?In such a case, we simply incorporate a menu into the layout and keep everything else the same. The navigation unit (list of pages) and link unit is removed from the sidebar. The rest of the layout remains the same.Let’s take a look at a real world example of such a layout. As you can see, the layout remains largely the same. The only difference is that we now have a drop-down menu, and the sidebar has just one ad unit.Such a layout...

The Layouts Exp1

The LayoutsIn this section, we will discuss some website layouts that have been proven to give a high CTR across different niches. I will give you a diagram of the layout and discuss why that particular layout is successful in getting a high CTR Please note that the colors used in the layouts below are for illustrative purposes only. Your final design would incorporate different colors (use the included themes as a guide).Example 1In this example, we will look at a layout for a mini-site with a dozen or sopages. Such sites can be highly lucrative...

The Best AD Formats For My Website

Use Image SparinglyCarrying on with the idea of minimizing noise, as an AdSense marketer, you should strive to use as few ads as possible. Too many Adsense marketers makethe mistake of completely littering their site with ads. Goo gle allows for 3 Adsense text and/o r image ads, 3 Adsense link units, and one Adsense forsearch unit per page. Just because they allow for 7 different ads on a page doesn’t mean that you have to use all of them. The less ads you have the better.Why?Because just like with AdWords, Google displays the highest paying...

Minimize The Noise

Noise was a big feature of site design before Google happened. Do yo u remember those sites from 1999 full of text and links and images and banners?Of course you do – if you are a web designer, you probably have nightmares about it.But then Google happened. Do you remember the joy (and the surprise/shock) of seeing a simple page with a large logo and a search box? While other search engines of that era (AltaVista, Yahoo, etc.) were full of pictures and banners, here was Google in all its Spartan glory. No wonder people took to it like a fish to...

Blogs vs Static Pages

I’m a big proponent of Wordpress. Not only is it extremely easy to use and set up, it is also very powerful and can be made to do pretty much anything. No wonder that top blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable run on this softwareAt its very core, however, Wordpress is a blogging platform. But blogs, by virtue of their very nature, are designed for readership. Most blog themespromote browsing and reading. They provide multiple escape routes, have alot of content and update regularly to keep visitors coming back. If you are trying to build up a loyal...

Minimize The Escape Routes

What do I mean by an “escape” route?Virtually anything that can get your visitor away from your site (and thus, your ads) would be described as an escape route. A link to another site, an image slideshow, a banner promoting an affiliate product...if it can distract your visitor from the ads, you want to remove it from your site.Have you ever seen a squeeze page? Here’s an example of one:This squeeze page has no links other than the email opt-in form. It is designed for one single purpose only: to “squeeze” the email from a visitor. In the hands...