CTR is the very reason for which most articles are written in the article marketing industry, if I can call it so. Having a poor CTR against a healthy traffic is useless and all the efforts of article marketers are centered arround the question how to increase CTR. Let us see the steps that help in doing so, in the following paragraphs.

Article that increases CTR is the one which really concentrates on the richness of the content information. By this statement I don't mean that keyword density may be given a slip. Keywords, of course help a lot but only to the extent of increasing your page rank and indexing. But CTR is another issue altogether which comes into play only after the user has found your page and begins using it.

Let me summarize the fundamentals first. You will need to pay utmost attention to the basic things such as

1. Page design, color schemes user friendliness etc.

2. Simplified navigation (at least 2; 3 would be better) and internal links within the context of the page content; article for example.

3. Color synchronizing of adunits to place strategically in between the articles.

Advanced strategies for increasing CTR

Article marketers need to adopt some advanced strategies, above the fundamental ones as listed above. Having prepared the ground with basic principles, now prepare for the kill, that is to increase your ad click through rate. Here are the vital steps.

1. The biggest mistake in article marketing profession is to concentrate on google adsense as the only and discount or totally forget the "inline" text ads served by movi.net, and intellitext.com and the like which are in total integration within the article body. They open up in layers when users browse through and roll mouse over certain keywords. Since these are just within the article or the "body" of your page, you have a better chance to higher CTR.

2. As you are placing the ads surrounded by prime content, you must know about the hotspots in general and specifically in your webpage. A hot spot is where even the most ignorant reader will flash his/her eyes. Study this aspect more before placing your ads. Google has a good reference on hotspots at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py? answer=17954. Ads towards the corners may never attract any clicks at all.

3. Always prefer text ads over image ads. Image ads have an uncanny ability to alert the user as they stand alone and distract them. If your ad appears like ads, be warned that people have not visited your site to read ads and so they turn away disgusted by blatant advertising.

4. Think for a minute, would you click on an ad in other peoples' site unless it is extremely compelling? Perhaps not, because screaming ads, free giveaways, banners etc drive them away, far from clicking despite placing them in extremely hot spots. Ads must be integral with the content, must not look like a separate unit, no borders unless you are using ad units in not so hot spots like side panels.

5. Choosing fonts and text colors is a challenge apart from choosing the right ad unit. Experiment with different text and link colors (as long as the complement the page color scheme). Remember, border and background must perfectly gel with the page background.

6. The next important method is placing the ad unit or better, a link unit, neat a hyper link or a button. For example, if you have a hyperlink "next>>" or a "submit" button this is where most users look at attentively and so ads placed close to them are most likely to be seen.

The crux of the matter lies in enticing the visitors and draw their attention to ad units and hook them there. Richness of contents and "monitored ads" dismantle any preconception about ads and thrashes whatsoever taboo. It may take some time but experimentation never fails along these lines.