A Standard WordPress Blog has two elements in it’s layout, one is the content area and the other is the Sidebar, either on right or left side. The sidebar usually has stuff the reader might check out after or before reading the content.
The contents in the sidebar goes out of the screen when the readers scrolls down to read the article. But these days I have been seeing more and more blogs use a floating sidebar which shows their important stuff even when the reader scrolls down.
If you are looking to create a floating sidebar for your website and know a bit of coding, you can read this awesome tutorial to get it done.
If you are using WordPress, and Coding seems like a NASA thing to you, try this plugin called Q2W3 Fixed Widget, which will makes your life easy.
After Installing and Activating Q2Q3 Fixed Widget Plugin in your blog, you will find the the widgets have an option to check/uncheck the widget to be fixed.
Do this to the widget you want to be fixed so that it had the reader’s attention till the end of the page.
This floating sidebar is quite effective to put things like a banner or subscription form or a call to action that remains visible increasing the conversion rate.
Can we float Adsense Ads?
I have gone through the Adsense Policy and found that Google doesn’t allow floating Ads but I have seen many website that are floating the Adsense ads in the sidebar. I wasn’t clear so I did not use it on AdSense Ads and Recommend not to use it if you don’t have a clear answer to it.
Here is what the Google Adsense policy says,
- Compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior.
- Encourage users to click the Google ads using phrases such as “click the ads”, “support us”, “visit these links” or other similar language.
- Direct user attention to the ads using arrows or other graphical gimmicks.
- Place misleading images alongside individual ads.
- Place ads in a floating box script.
- Format ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on that page.
- Format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads.
- Place misleading labels above Google ad units. For instance, ads may be labelled “Sponsored Links” or “Advertisements”, but not “Favourite Sites” or “Today’s Top Offers”.
If you have more info on this please share it with us in the comment section below.
