CTR Advice Needed - What Factors Should I Change?

[BeckM2]

Hi,
I've got a small tech blog at www.helpspa.com and I'm wondering what I can do to improve my 1% AdSense CTR.

The traffic over the last year or so has increased nicely to the point where in July the site had around 11,300 unique visitors and around 13,200 pageviews. The traffic climbs a little each month.

At the end of June I moved an ad unit that was at the end of the main article template and made it a right long-skyscraper instead. The CTR improved slightly...from around 0.70 to 1.0%.

So in trying to improve this CTR, I have the following questions and I could really use some advice:

1) Clearly I use a template for my blog. Do templates generally affect CTR? If I use a better template could that help? Or do custom designs do better with AdSense?

2) Also -- is a 1% CTR average for my niche? Should I be aiming for 2%?

3) I know positioning matters, but I thought based on what I've read that my positioning is acceptable. The large square center ad is my best one and does well. Would change is positioning be recommended here?

I really appreciate anyone taking the time to look at the site and all feedback is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!