Ad Placement and Your Web Design

If you are creating a website with profit in mind, and if the business model you’re using is the tried and true AdSense model, then the placement of adverts is something that you need to consider strongly as you do so. Many people here make the mistake of building a website and then thinking afterward about where they are going to place the adverts. This then results in a website that has adverts tacked on, and which no one is likely to notice or click on; or worse, in adverts that are tacked on over the top of the content and which distract from the words themselves and drive away visitors. What’s important then is to make sure that you consider where your ads will be placed before your site design in order to ensure that it is placed smartly in relation to the content and other images.

Designing Your Layout Around Your Ad Placement

This way you will be able to design your site in such a way that your adverts are prominent without being distracting. But what might that look like?

One place that adverts often get placed is within the body of the text and this is something that you can do fairly easily without having to change your layout. However what you do need to consider here is the width of your content, and you need to ensure that there is enough space in your columns that you can fit the adverts next to the text if you want to avoid breaking your paragraphs up. You may also want to consider how you utilize images and headers in the text which can attract attention either away or towards your adverts.

You then need to think about the adverts that you might include in the build of the layout itself – for instance around the headers and menus. Common is to include adverts either at the top of the side menu, along the top parallel to a top menu, or next to the header. Again if you want to use this strategy then you need to ensure that you leave enough space, and that you consider the kinds of menus you are going to use.

Flexible Design

However it is not enough to simply sketch up your ad placement when designing the site, you also need to think about how you are going to move the adverts as time goes on. Moving adverts can sometimes be a great way to temporarily increase your CTR as repeat visitors have to re-learn the precise location of the adverts. For this reason you might want to consider your site design with a few extra locations that you will be able to put ads in future. Likewise you might also then use this to provide paid advertising space for sponsors.

The other reason you need to think about moving your adverts is that sometimes the rules of SEO change. This happened recently of course when Google’s new algorithms started punishing those sites that had too many ads above the fold in relation to their text and images and in such cases some sites will always be forced to adapt. When you do this though, don’t just move the ads – but consider how you need to rearrange the whole website.

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