Did Google Slap You?

According to the blogs, forums and a variety of other news sources affiliate advertisers are getting slapped around by Google big time!

Google Adwords costs are skyrocketing, sponsored listing placements have hit rock bottom or are disappearing altogether.

What about you? Has your site been affected? Do you want to know the real reason why this happened? Would you like to prevent this from happening to your affiliate site, or regain your Adwords placement?

Then listen up.

Because contrary to what you might have heard, "Google's Slap" has absolutely nothing to do with squeeze pages or other sign-up forms on your landing pages. Nothing!

Then what's the problem? Relevance. It's all about your landing page's relevance people.

Technically speaking, Google changed their "Quality Score" standards. The change mostly effects marketers who point their AdWords campaigns to simple sales pages and squeeze pages (AKA lead capture pages). These marketers have lost a lot of traffic and impressions and have seen their cost per click skyrocket.

Google has made it crystal clear about its requirements that you make your pages relevant to the keyword, title and description used in your ad.

Where does it say that?

Right in Google AdWords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines:
https://adwords.google.com/select/siteguidelines.html

Following is an excerpt from those guidelines:

"If users don't quickly see what they clicked on your ad to find, they'll leave your site frustrated and may never return to your site or click on ads in the future. Here are some pointers for making sure that doesn't happen:

Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.

Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.

Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.

Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.

In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.

You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines."

Here's the summarized version: If all of the affiliate links are removed from your site does your site still provide relevant, informative and valuable content for visitors?

It really doesn't get any clearer than that what Google wants to see, now does it?

All Google is trying to do is get you to improve the quality of your site. Having quality content on your site like articles, reports, news, etc., will also help your AdWords listings.

In addition, content rich web sites rank well in organic search engine listings.

Through the placement of your site in the search engines, you will be able to attract more and better targeted traffic.

Content rich sites are also more likely to obtain incoming links from outside sites. Google loves incoming links. These links will also pull in targeted traffic.

Speaking of links, when you add content to your site, link directly to a content page from the landing page. My research has shown, sites with a considerable number of pages have been less effected by Google's Slap.

Also, add a "Contact" page to your site and link directly to this page from the landing page.

Finally, create a "Site Map" and link to all your content pages directly from the site map. In addition, the content page you’ve linked to from the landing page, should link to the site map.

I contacted a few affiliates I know, while doing research for this article and here's what I discovered:

The affiliates who provide relevant, valuable content on their landing pages have found their efforts are actually being rewarded during this latest Google Dance.

I also discovered, their Adwords costs are actually decreasing, while their placement in the sponsored listings are increasing, thus making their ads more visible.

In closing, if you want to avoid Google's Slap, just provide quality content throughout your site, link directly to the content from your landing page, and make your landing pages relevant to the keyword, title and description used in your ad.

Dale King is the owner of the new Internet Marketing website, GuruKnowledge.org

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