flickr 'txd'

flickr 'txd'

As some of you may have already seen, there’s a bunch of chatter right now about a new Adwords slap targeting affiliate review sites. One of the main posts being referenced is this one by Perry Marshall.

We think some of the severity and scariness is kind of getting pretty overblown and we haven’t seen any problems with our own campaigns, but we know some people are very concerned or affected with this recent update so we felt it was important to talk about.

We’ll buzz through a few of the issues that have been brought up around various blogs and forums and share what we think it means, as well as give you some key tips to keep in mind for improving quality score.

So What’s Currently Going On?

Here’s a few of the main issues being discussed and some of our perspective on it:

Was there an Adwords quality score update and system-wide sweep around July 21?

Yep, it appears that’s the case, just as they routinely seem to do now every 3 or 4 months.

However, from what we’ve gathered, it appears nothing has really changed as far as Google’s affiliate guidelines go. As time goes on, what typically happens with each new quality sweep is not so much a change in quality guidelines, but rather an enhanced enforcement of those guidelines.

Are there some high quality, high value affiliate sites that unjustly or mistakenly get nailed when these updates are done?

Yes. Inevitably there are always going to be “casualties of war” so to speak with quality score sweeps, which can and do affect high quality affiliates and merchants at times.

Is Google specifically out to get affiliates?

Unlikely. Affiliates can add fantastic value for search traffic and Google knows this, otherwise they probably would have wiped them all out by now. Unfortunately though, because there’s a lot of bad apples in the affiliate world that degrade overall quality, it’s no secret that Google does in fact set the bar higher for affiliates as they clearly state here:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66238

Did Google update something something in their algorithm that targets “unmasked” or “naked” affiliate links on landing pages?

Perhaps…at least that’s what’s being reported. If that’s the case, we’re guessing it may be just a system update to more accurately identify affiliate sites.

Contrary to some of what’s being reported, many affiliate review sites with unmasked links still seem to be just fine. Just scan through a handful of niche topics and you’ll see plenty of them still running strong.

One side note along those lines though, if you’re doing anything serious in Adwords, you should be using some sort of conversion tracking system. Using virtually any tracking system will force you to mask your affiliate links anyway by default.

Are they nailing or even banning affiliates who routinely switch domains to get around slaps?

Maybe. There’s been some reports of that. We suspect those are probably more extreme cases though. The more you follow Adwords landing page and site quality guidelines and webmaster guidelines to begin with, the less chance you’ll have to encounter doing that anyway.

The bottom line here is this quality score crackdown doesn’t appear to indicate any major changes away from the existing Adwords quality guidelines for affiliates, just an enforcement. Whenever you’re affected by a slap, more often that not it’s because you’re doing something that doesn’t match up with their stated guidelines to begin with.

At the same time, we think Google does do some pretty stupid and unfair things sometimes. For one thing, the way they handle quality score and slaps is really ridiculous. The fact that for months they’ll essentially say “hey…you’re doing a great job…keep it up!”, then all of a sudden overnight they nail you with a poor QS across the board on a domain with virtually no chance to recover is simply ridiculous. They should do it more gradually and give people a chance to improve quality and recover.

In the scheme of things, we’d encourage you to face issues like this by trying to see opportunity and not feel like you’ve been defeated. Facing obstacles and overcoming and adapting to changes comes with the territory in any business, so the better you can adapt to changes, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Enforcement of Adwords quality guidelines is unlikely to get any easier, so stay ahead of the game, work hard to cover all your bases, and always take a hard look at the added value you’re providing for people.

A Few Adwords Quality Score Tips

The following suggestions don’t cover everything, but are just a few key elements that affiliates typically misunderstand, skip, or don’t know about:

  • Build a real site with multiple pages – Trying to get away with a one page site these days is just asking for problems. Contrary to what some say though, you don’t need hundreds of pages…but make sure you have enough to provide a complete and meaningful experience for users. For a review site, having a comparison page, a review page for each product, and several articles will do just fine as your core content.
  • Write original content – Don’t take shortcuts here. Take the time to write original content yourself or hire it out.
  • Avoid duplicate content on multiple pages across your site – It’s perfectly fine and normal to have multiple landing page versions for testing, but make sure to block those duplicates with your robots.txt file.
  • Try using “nofollow” tags on your outbound affiliate links – This may or may not help, but we suspect it may provide a little insurance on quality. The “nofollow” tag tells Google to ignore the link and that you don’t fully trust that 3rd party you’re linking to. In the SEO world at least, Google analyzes who you link out to, and it’s possible they may do the same in Adwords. You may trust the merchant you’re linking to, but Google may not, especially in the case of many ClickBank products.
  • Make sure in addition to your main pages, you at least have an About Us, Privacy, and Contact Page – Many affiliates will include a privacy and contact page, but don’t think about having an “about us” page. This is a mistake. The Adwords guidelines clearly state they expect you to be transparent about your business and what you do, so an “about us” type page is essential to that. Write up a brief mission statement for your niche site and give a brief description to the user of how you’re trying to help them. That’s also a good gut check of how much value you’re adding with your site. Some other pages to consider including are FAQ, Disclosure, and/or Terms and Conditions.
  • Optimize your site for fast load time and have clean code – Optimize those images and make sure you’re using a well coded template or a good clean site building program. Your landing page load time and easy to interpret code with good browser compatibility can definitely affect your quality score.
  • Build your site with some basic SEO principles in mind in alignment with Google’s webmaster guidelines - Even if you don’t plan to do much SEO work, building it with some basic SEO elements in mind can be a big help. At a bare minimum, make sure you make good use of title tags, descriptions, appropriate use of H tags, etc. Also make sure you have a good and easy to follow navigation structure. Even if you eliminate full navigation on your ppc landing pages, make sure users can easily find your main site content, at a minimum by having some key links in your footer.
  • As always, pay close attention to relevancy – Make sure your most relevant content on the landing page immediately shows in the browser above the fold. One relevancy example where people sometimes make mistakes, is on single vs. multiple product landing pages. If you’re bidding on a term like “best ink jet printers”, it’s probably best to send people to a multiple product page. If you’re bidding on a specific product name, it’s best to keep that landing page focused almost entirely on that product, especially above the fold.

If anyone has any other questions, thoughts, concerns, or experiences to share or talk about on this issue, fire away below…

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