Google AdSense continues to be a steady source of income generation for a vast majority of websites, and over the years, it has stood the test of time even as other search engines such as Yahoo! & Microsoft Bing, as well as advertising companies like TTZMedia & Text Link Ads have tried to offer alternate channels and means of generating income. Google itself has refined its AdSense program, adding image based advertisement, Search based advertisements, Link Units and so forth which help boost conversion rates. While Google's refinements are great, it is important to refine your own website to push up your Google AdSense Average Income, and here are a few tactics that you can apply.

1. Heatmap for Eye Movement: This suggestion is the most common and effective technique for increasing visibility and conversion rate for Google Ads. For example, the site useit.com showcases the following eye-tracking image for eye movement on a web-page. As the map shows, the headlines and more generally, the left-side of the page gets the most attention. This is frequently because most languages are read left to right. Google Ads, as on this site, placed on left side of an article get more readership and clicks.

   Eye Tracking Heat Map

2. Solving a key pain-point for your readers: Are your readers in some degree of pain (psychologically) and want to quickly find an answer? Examples include Home Repair problems, Car problems, Travel issues, Customer Support issues - issues that they wish would go away quickly. Advertisements targeted at solving those problems dramatically increase click-throughs and conversion rates. Making pain go away works very well.
3. Do you have an additional forum, other than your website to drive traffic? Another website, or speaking forum, or a radio show, or an advertisement campaign? Traffic ultimately guides your level of earnings through AdSense, so any additional way to generate relevant traffic will help you. The sites that typically generate the most money through AdSense tend to have additional forums on which that site is getting mentioned.
4. Test, test, test - with text ads, image ads, Ad Channels, Site Search and so forth, and see which combination is giving you the best returns. Testing is not easy, and you have to control variables as much as you can. However, a thorough testing job can increase your conversion rate by up to a percentage point, and add significantly to your bottom line.
5. Maintain a clean site - do not link to sites that are not high-quality and don't give value to your readers. Google's bots are getting increasingly smarter and will detect content that does not match up with the rest of your site, and tend to lower the value of your site. This does result in somewhat lower traffic, but more importantly, the quality of Ads being served to your site degrades, resulting in lower conversion rates.
6. Understand the Google Ad Cycle: Google will keep testing different Ads on your site, and it is not uncommon for high-quality ads to be rotated with lower quality ads from time to time. Google has commitments to keep for its advertisers, and they will try to see if some of the ads that are getting lower clicks elsewhere, will generate higher clicks on your site. Their goal is to maximize clicks for their advertisers, and not necessarily to keep you, the publisher, happy. However, if you keep your site clean and fresh with new, relevant content, you will invariably continue moving up their list of preferred publisher sites and you will get high-quality advertising displayed more often than not on your site.

Applying these techniques will help steadily raise your Google AdSense Average Income!