Go4Expert - Useful Adsense Tips

I have been on many forums ( specially Digitalpoint ) and seen many people pay some bucks to get success tips on Adsense which kills the concept of forum and free knowledge. With this in mind, I thought it would be nice to have all the best tips that I have read / experimented over time and again for the best of the members of this forum and fellow webmasters. This can also act as a spoilers for those who sell $75 overpriced Adsense eBooks that never deliver on what they promise. At the same time, hope those same opportunists don't violate the copyright on this thread and produce another eBook based on this information. :-)

Always use Google Heat map as it really works.
Write original content and not the ones which are found everywhere and Invest in content as that should be of highest priority.
Remove unnecessary links from the pages having Adsense as you don't want users to click on anything other than Ad if they want to navigate away.
Use only one Ad block per page to keep 0.01 clicks out of the way or at least from your best performing area of your site. They serve the highest paying ads first. e.g. You have a vertical ad block in the left column under the nav menu, then an ad block in the center of the screen above the fold (below your headline). Now the left column block pulls the best ads whereas the center block gets the best CTR. So you lose a big opportunity, eh?
Blend Ads from background point of view but make the color stand out. Visitors are not fools but mixing advertising and content help. This stops visitors from getting ad blindness
Use Links Units.
Use Text Ads for banners and leaderboard as they have more advertisers to fit into the width than one single Image Ad.
Make Adsense Color Palletes to show them different color Ads each time so users don't become used to it.
Use custom as well as URL channels to test and test and test. and analyze the best performing pages do 100 times better than the worst and this can make you more informed as to where to spend your time.
Testing and experimenting should be given enough time to see results. I prefer at least a complete 7 day period before a next experiment.
Bring Targeted traffic through Adwords as that would increase CTR.
Use competitive Ad filters to remove out the Ads which are not based on content.
Create a separate site to target high paying keywords only. When Adsense doesn't know which ads to pick, it seems to draw conclusions from the surrounding site.
Keep your design simple and have provision to experiement without major redesign.
Don't play with the adsense code.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to replace your google ads with affiliate ads over time. There are many Alternatives to adsense
Make your pages validate ( Did not mean W3C Validated ). Otherwise you may find that one syntax error means that the spider ignores vast chunks of content, resulting in poor targetting.
Don't get frustrated if things don't do well. Leave it as it is for couple of weeks and come back again and try and start over again.
Serve the user. If your site has intrinsic value, users will come back, and you'll earn far more than you would from a single visit.
Be fair to advertisers. If your clicks won't convert well for advertisers. This may result in "smart pricing" for your clicks (meaning less money for you).
Beautify your content so Adsense can also pick up good words and Use proper grammar and spelling so that your articles are professional.
Create sequentially related content spanning multiple related pages and encourage visitor flow.
Watch your Analytics - sometimes you will just mention something in an article for one sentence that brings in a lot of visitors so go and write an entire article on that subject.
REPORT ALL TOS Violators and Scrapers in your niche to Adsense support.
Think about your visitors, they are the most important thing to focus on. Who are they, were they come from, , what do they need, etc..
Don't turn your back on Adsense Search. The results it provides are pretty useful, so your visitors will be happy - and it can add meaningfully to your bottom line.
Don't turn your back on Adsense Feeds. You would see some decent money flowing in.
Wider ad blocks generally get better CTR but get more in the way. Vertical ads gets lower CTR but can be more off-the-way and low profile. So you can choose how aggresive you want to be with the ads on your content sites.
Target more specific niches and keywords in your content.

e.g. /widget.html displays ads that are paying about .03/click, because it's a really broad term that advertisers don't want to pay much for. However, /widget-repair.html displays ads that are paying about .75/click, because advertisers have found that people who actually click on an ad for repairing widgets are likely to turn into significant paying jobs.
More and more visitors by doing more and more SEO. Focus less on CTR/eCPM Column but focus more on Page Impression column.
Don't get frustrated if someone says double digit CTR / eCPM as you have no reason to believe him and he will never disclose the right thing to you and if he does he is TOS violator and you know what to do. :D
Open Adsense in New Window. Import your Adsense Code into Google Ad manager and have the option in Google Ad manager to open the urls in new Window. Thats it and now you would see Adsense Opens in new Window
Use Google AdSense section targeting to help AdSense deliver more relevant ads
Finally Never give up as there could be something better than what you are getting so never say I am MAXED OUT