For some time now I have followed the pack in choosing the layout of my sites. A three column design with site navigation on the left, content in the middle, and links on the right. The right hand column was reserved for my pay-per-click advertising.

I use Google Adsense pay-per-click ads as my right hand column. I was hoping this would give the visitor who did not find what they were looking for on my pages an alternative. Google does a good job of supplying ads that are relevant to your site.

There is one major flaw in this thinking.

Since people generally read from left to right and top to bottom, they usually do not even glance at the right side ads.

Your eyes will automatically go to the site title (Header) first, then travel down the left hand side (Navigation) and stop on the content. If the content is not what they are looking for they will most likely look at your navigation and see if something there catches their eye. If nothing does grab their attention, they back-button away into oblivian.

Let’s face it, the only sections a visitor to any site really needs to see are the content and the navigation.

In the three column layout desribed above, the third column (right) is ignored.

How do we get people to pay attention to our alternative instead of running back to the search engines for their answers.

Lets start with what we know. The average visitor to any site will mainly look for the content of your site, and the navigation to get a feel for what the web site is about.

For a webmaster looking to earn a living we would like our visitors to really look at the third column alternative if our own content is not what they are looking for. Using Google Adsense or some other form of pay-per-click advertising can earn you a substantial income for helping your visitors find what they are looking for.

Then where do I put the third column with the income generating ads?

Answer: In the middle.

Not centered, but between the content and the navigation sections.

In affect, this forces the reader to view your ads as their eyes travel to your site navigation on the far right side.

Now they get a quick look at the ads being offered before they check out your navigation.

For me this little trick brought my click-through rate from about 1-2% using the old layout to 5% with the new one.

Try it out. Let me know if you see the same results as I did.