Marketing Defined

Inline Adsense Ad Improves Aesthetics of Long Articles

To drive home key points of important SEO and marketing topics, it often becomes necessary to write a lengthy blog post.

You will notice that breaking up these long articles with optimum placement of Adsense ads inline (inside the body of paragraphs), improves the flow and visual appeal of these articles, keeping a reader engrossed in what you have to convey, well beneath the fold.

Of course, you don’t have to stick to an Adsense Ad to improve the flow….. instead,

A set of optimized graphics using a keyword laced “alt” tag in each, or an in-demand YouTube video - again with the title containing keyphrases related to your blog… will not only improve the design and command attention, but is yet another SEO strategy that will help push a weblog upwards in the SERPs.

If its video you elect to use instead of an inline Adsense ad, Wordpress users can download the clever Vipers Video Quick Tags YouTube Video plug-in… .

Recent eye-tracking study heat maps, highlight that subscribers’ interest starts to diminish after the “fold” on the first page…. The “fold” is the last visible line on a web page in a browser… before the need to scroll down further.

This study also clearly documents that it’s not wise to count on your blog’s readers sitting still and viewing the story from beginning to end. It takes constant analysis of web logs to glean associated page views and the length of time spent at a website to guide us toward making the appropriate changes in both content and design to command viewer attention.

The “orange” hot spot in the center of the following “eye tracking” heat map - of a browser window - gives an idea for the best placement for Adsense ads.. See how eye movement dramatically ignores the areas surrounding the “hot spot” as documented by areas colored “grey”, diminishing again towards the lowest point at the fold of the web page:

Would you agree that breaking up the article in this manner with Adsense inline ads makes it flow better?

HTML Code for Google Adsense Inline Ads

This is the HTML code I use to set up the inline Adsense ads on my Wordpress blogs.

Insert the following into the HTML code when writing your post [code cannot be added into a post in the Visual or text mode]… immediately above the beginning of the paragraph that you want the vertical 120×240 Adsense block or 250×250 rectangle to appear… and in this example the adsense block will float to the left hand side.

<div style="float:left;margin-top:0px;margin-right:5px;">
insert Google Adsense javascript code block here
</div>

The margin-right measurement of 5px can be changed to 10px or whatever you elect, so as to leave more space between the inline adsense block or image — and the text.

Highly recommended you use the WP Adsense Deluxe plug-in to display your Adsense ads. This plug in makes it far easier to substitute one simple line of code relative to the selected adsense block above, instead of inserting the lengthy Adsense javascript code block.

For example I choose to name my Adsense 120×240 inline banners “vert_banner” in the WP Adsense Deluxe plug-in so this is the code I would use - but this time around the example will float the Adsense vertical banner to the right hand side of the page. Again make sure the line of code is inserted immediately above the paragraph you want the block to appear alongside.

<div style="float:right;margin-top:0px;margin-left:5px;">
< !--adsense#vert_banner-- >
</div>

Bearing in mind the “positive” weight applied by Google to relevant keyphrases in the “alt” text of graphics, it’s a good SEO practice to use 1-3 inline graphics in the majority of blog posts.

To display inline graphics: In the above example of code, simply substitute the URL to a graphic in place of the Google Adsense javascript code block.