Want to make the most out of your Adsense ad units? Here are seven simple tips that will work to help increase your earnings.

Choose the Right Ad Units

As a general rule the rectangle ad units work best. The 336x280 large rectangle and 300X250 in line rectangle are your best performers. I have also had very good performance with the 200X200 square, the 125x125 button and the 160X600 wide skyscraper. The button and wide skyscraper performance depends on placement. Keep the button in the main body of the text and it can perform well. The wide skyscraper works well on long pages or in a three column layout with it near the top. Personally I recommend you avoid the 468X60 banner. It does not perform well no matter where you place it.

Website Colors

Make the ad unit colors so they blend in with your site. If your color scheme is dark purple on white with dark purple links use the same colors in the ad units. Most people will say that you should blend your ads with your site by setting the border of the ad unit to the same as the background color of your site. This does work well, but I recommend that you actually rotate your color schemes of your ads, including setting the border color so it stands out occasionally. It helps to overcome ad blindness.

Put the Ads in the Hot Zones

The Google Adsense help has a great heat map of where to place ads. The hottest spot is in the main content area above the fold. If you don’t want the ad unit to take up all the room at the top of the main content area use a smaller unit and float it left or right at the top of the main content.

Use Channels

Google provides channels to track ad performance. Use them! Assign a different channel to each ad unit, not just a catch all channel for your site. This will give you a better idea of what units a performing better than others and give you better ideas on how to tweak them.

Use a Horizontal Link Unit

A horizontal link unit placed right front and center on a page either by the top navigation or the top of the main content perform well. Personally, don’t bother with adding a vertical link unit, there are other ad programs that could use that space.

Less is More

Just because you are allowed to have three Adsense ad units on your page does not mean you have to use three. Google will display the highest paying ads they can. The more ad units you have the lower the ads will pay on the ad units further down the page. Try displaying less ad units and track your earnings with channels. Odds are your earnings will actually rise.

Use Alternate Ads

Adsense will not always display ads and will display a public service announcement instead. You have the option of using an alternate ad in case Google does not have an ad to display, so look for a good alternate ad to fill that location. There are lots of other ad services and affiliate programs out there that you can sign up for that can use that space.

Overall Google Adsense is a great program to monetize your website and with a little tweaking of your ad units it can earn you good money.