PPC affiliates: how avoiding the Google hammer can improve your site
Tuesday 09 February 2010
TAGS: Affiliate marketing | Google AdWords | Pay per click
In Q4 of 2009 Google seemed to unmercifully ban over 30’000 AdWords advertisers! The big question that was on every PPC advertiser’s mind was quite simply ‘Why?’ Kevin Sung, Client Services Manager at Silverbean explains why.
Those expecting to be banned were the obvious offenders such as the ‘get-rich-quick-with-Google’ fraudsters. However this time the strategic advertiser cull was a much more thorough process delving into the realms of areas such as landing page quality, using Google’s brand to sell and unique content (or rather lack of it).
So how does this affect affiliates?
The use of the ‘sacred’ Google brand to sell information products or business schemes I’m sure you all know is a ‘one strike and you’re out’ policy so this point does not need to be expanded on.
However it seems Google would like the affiliates that utilise PPC to ‘add value’ to its users and not simply ‘rip off’ merchant’s content and create landing pages that are almost identical in content. The AdWords Site Quality Guidelines state:
“Non-unique Landing Page: Google won’t show multiple ads leading to identical or similar landing pages at the same time, even if the pages have different domains. This means that if another advertiser’s ad leads to a landing page that’s similar to yours, and his keyword has a higher Ad Rank, his ad will show instead of yours. “
It can be assumed that one of the factors that could lead to a page being deemed as low quality is lack of ‘unique content’. It really is not worth risking the wrath of Google’s axe by violating this landing page guideline.
And for a merchant the worst case scenario would be that an affiliate could possibly prevent their own PPC ad from showing due to the affiliate having a higher ad rank! Outlined Here
A Little Pain, Lots of Gain
Although in the immediate it may seem like affiliates will now have to spend valuable ‘commission earning’ hours producing and creating ‘unique’ content for their affiliate sites in an effort to avoid the chop. This will pay dividends in the long run! – By creating more ‘unique’ content you will provide your users with fresh material to absorb about their area of interest and in turn promote loyalty to your site whilst actually giving your users useful information.
Outside of PPC this concept of ‘adding value’ could also have the following benefits!
- ‘Adding unique value’ attracts readers who own other sites or blogs which can lead to back links. (SEO)
- Quality content can build your credibility with your readers. Proving you are not just another ‘landing’ page affiliate and again improving likelihood of loyalty. (Credibility)
- Unique content can make you stand out from other affiliate competition. Offering a fresh unique opinion must be a positive after users have seen and read the same thing so many times. (Competitive edge)
- Unique content offers three of the most wanted and desired elements online today: information, entertainment and exposure. (Value)
Kevin Sung is a Client Services Manager at Silverbean. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how Silverbean can help you achieve your marketing objectives through affiliate marketing; please contact our resident affiliate marketing agency expert using one of the following.