Yet another CTR-Theme post.

I was looking for some high CTR-Themes for my blog as I'm going to be cross-advertising with my YouTube channel and some very active forums. I have a pretty decent name on the forums and a decent amount of followers on YouTube. The blog was going to be SEO'd and hopefully eventually turned into an educational authority website for the niche.

However throughout my research and the thousands of posts asking "Should I good it" I've noticed thousands of claims over the span of the forums that it's against AdSense ToS.

I'd like to start off by stating that right now my AdSense account is literally all that I have, none of my niches are really set out for selling a product. I am planning on getting into one here soon, but as of right now that's just not the case.

What I would like to know:

Is it against the AdSense ToS and if so why?
Does it negatively effect rankings like some people claim?

Read the AdSense TOS, especially the section that's titled "Fomatting content to mimic ads". That's where you need to be careful with these "high CTR" themes because many have options where you can make it so that your content is virtually indistinguishable from the ads.

If I were you, I'd take a look at the ad placements of these themes and work those into your own chosen theme. It's relatively easy to do, it looks better because your site's not a cookie-cutter template, and you can have the safety of knowing that the developer of the theme hasn't gone batshit insane and worked in some "optimizations" with the AdSense code that are going to get you banned.

Remember, a lot of this crap is floating around because of people trying to sell stuff to the idiots at WF. They'll buy anything if you tell them it'll make 'em millionaires overnight.

tiyowan said:

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I went ahead and got the $27 "exclusive" version of CTR-Theme but I am planning on just using it to get some basic ideas on styling, etc. Obviously creating anything that will get an advertisement click unexpectedly will be against the terms of service. Anything tricking a user into clicking an advertisement or creating false clicks will also be against the ToS, that's not even negotiable.

My plan was to use CTR-Theme as a starting point and then create my own theme using what I felt like would be the best placements for my website. The thing is I don't have any ad-sense experience, so I decided purchasing it for at-least the code would be a good thing to do.

Hell, I may even just look at his "Optimizations", remove them, and then style CTR-Theme to look like what I want it to.

It's not allowed on High CTR themes or such types. My suggestion is to use normal themes that look great for your audience and advertisers.

endlasuresh said:

It's not allowed on High CTR themes or such types. My suggestion is to use normal themes that look great for your audience and advertisers.

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I am going to have to argue with you on this point, Google wants you to have high CTR. How do you think they make their money? (Besides for stealing ours). They even offer optimal advertisement layouts for CTR.

Solid plan, bro. It's always better to develop your own theme if it's for a site that you are going to be working on for a long time.

CTR themes can get your account banned because they can cause unusually high click-through rates. That's the only danger I see in using them.