Any legit ways of drawing attention to your ads?

Other than placement and color, are there any legitimate (that is, won't get you banned from AdSense) ways of drawing attention to your ads? Like using the surrounding images to draw your eye there naturally?

 

I would like to hear about this too

 

I know you can't use anything obvious like arrows or animated images, but back when Google would still answer questions about their image policies they did give me permission to place a shopping bag icon next to an ad. That wouldn't fit in on all sites though. If anyone has gotten permission from Google to use images nearby, could you show us what was approved?

 

Google says not to use images which tie together the images/content with the ad.

Inside AdSense: Ad and image placement: a policy clarification

 

I started getting many more clicks as soon as I added that ugly welcome header block.

I'm not a fan of it, although Chase helped me make a very nice one. But, it's my most productive spot on my forum, by far.

 

Really? I may consider having him whip one up for me. I see them on your guys' sites all the time and I despise it really. But I may consider trying it out for the AdSense boost.

 

I've never had a problem viewing welcome headers on sites. If I'm not going to join yeah they're in the way, otherwise I'm more than fine with them. It gives a place a chance to show what they're proud of and have to offer. If I go to a site and it's like "we are the most active board about blah blah or we've been featured by blah blah" I think "okay, this site has relevant information, plenty of resources to find, and probably a speedy response to any questions that I may have"

of course a board could always lie about things on their header, but you'll quickly find out

I like how the disney board tells me some of the things that I'll get from registering and even gives me navigation to parts of the site that I might feel like checking out (the forum, games, and radio)

of course if I somehow got on that site looking for information about a trip to disney and that's all I'll probably bounce to one of the ads on the right

Arny, have you ever played around with how many ads you display in the welcome header to see which got better results? maybe ads to the left.. or 6 smaller ads could get you a couple more options? such as right now I have 3 ads dealing with disney trips/vacations, I go to another page and it brings up a single image ad for disney store.. if you could get both in one, it might convert more, then again, maybe not.. but I'd be interested.. maybe flank each side of the welcome header as I mentioned earlier

and one more small nitpicky question, is there a reason that you list it as wdw in some spots as opposed to walt disney world? do you get anybody onto your site searching "wdw" especially compared to "walt disney world?"

your page titles come up with wdw dining, you do have walt disney world later on in the title (which is a bit long if you ask me, maybe only do that for the forumhome).

here's a great article on how to setup your page titles per view on your forums:

How to SEO vBulletin without VBSEO

not trying to take away from you one bit, you've got a great board, but it could use a little tweaking in your keywords, page titles

wish I could swing a vacation, I'd know where to look if I could

 

Nick, here are some real stats to back up the 'welcome block' Adsense....

June '09 - 420 total clicks
Welcome Block - 240 clicks
Under Nav Bar - 126 clicks
After 1st post - 40 clicks
Top Right Banner - 7 clicks
A few miscellaneous clicks - 7 clicks

....so, as you can see, I get the majority of my clicks (57%) from that 'welcome block'.

First of all, I absolutely appreciate the suggestions on the tweaks. I know that I need plenty of tweaks on my site

A couple of quick points....I've tried different locations and showing them to different usergroups and what I've pretty much settled on now is that the 'guests' are the only ones to view ads. Aside from the 'after first post' and 'top right banner' ones which get occasional clicks from members as I display them in a rotation of ads.

As far as the "WDW" goes, yes it's a term that is used for Walt Disney World. It's a very common term with the Disney online community. As a matter of fact, us "Disney Nuts" have a whole set of abbreviations or acronyms that we use for everything from the rides at parks to the names we give each other .... here are some examples ....

Disney-Related Acronyms... - Walt Disney Boards - Message Boards & Forum Discussing The Genius Of Walter Elias Disney!

.....so, the "WDW" is something that I did on purpose. But, again, I appreciate the comments and suggestions because I've only been doing this for a little over a year and have A LOT to learn still. And thanks for the nice comments about the site as well

 

no problem, the reason that I ask is that people that come onto your site might not be as knowledgeable about the terminology

so if I've never been to disney (I haven't!) I'm going to search "walt disney world accomodations" or whatever instead of "wdw accomondations" since I'm not in the know and already part of the community.. and by having what I'd be searching for in the page title, you're more likely to rank higher .. you don't really need to market to the people already on the site and familiar with it

 

Those are some impressive stats Arny! Do you include a bit about "registered members do not have to view this advertisement"?