) They look in the top left hand corner of the content. And when they do, they see empty space, because the centered headline starts off to the right.
So what do they do? Instead of scanning right, they move their eyes down. And they miss the headlines.
Centered headlines are wasted headlines. If you center them, you’ve hidden them from 10-20% of your readers. Might as well not have them at all. And don’t even think about right-justifying them.
Just left-justify them and don’t ever worry about it again!
A word about tables: the ideal table for online is short, narrow, and only used for data. When a table is too wide or too long, part of it is out of the reader’s natural field of vision. When they scan fast, they won’t see all of it.
10.5 Maximize your Click-Throughs With Placement
Yeah, size matters, but so does placement…particularly as far as Google AdSense ads are concerned. Remember how I said to use the skyscraper format for ads, putting them in the margins as opposed to banner ads across the top or bottom?
Well, guess how much difference that can make. Go on, guess. OK, I’ll tell you. Poorly placed ads, such as banner ads down at the very bottom of the page, might have a click-through rate of about 2.3% on a good day.
But well-placed ads, such as a nice skyscraper ad in that critical upper-left quadrant we talked about, can have a click-through rate as high as 40%.
And that’s for the same ad. Yes, the very same ad can have a click-through rate of an abysmal 2.3% or an awesome 40%. It has nothing to do with the ad itself and everything to do with where you put it.
Another neat trick to maximize click-through is to massage the colors of the ads so that they fit in with the colors of your site. Ads that are seen as “fitting in” get more clicks than ads that clash.
Here’s an example of some ads that look like part of the site:
Chapter 11: Building a Virtual Content Empire to Display Ads On
So now you’re ready to build your content-rich empire and start raking in the bucks, right? Sure you are! You don’t have to be a great writer, you just have to know where to get good writing. And heck, it really doesn’t even have to be great. Just good.
Here are the steps you’ll want to take:
1. Pick a domain name – this requires some thought, since even though it’s not as critical as it used to be to have a catchy domain name, it still matters to some users. Once you’ve picked one, check with http://www.web.com, or http://www.whois.net to see if it’s available. If your favorite choice isn’t available in .com format, consider being flexible and having it in .net, .biz, .org, or some other form.
2. Reserve the domain name. Web.com and many, many others offer that service.
3. Get web hosting. You’ll want to shop around on this one, since prices and services and terms & conditions vary greatly.
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