Are You Ready for the Next 5 Google Slaps?
July 24th, 2007 by 
Amit
Now I know you’re thinking “Oh NO! Not more Google Slaps!?!”
We’ll I can guarantee you that they’re going to keep coming. And if you’re not prepared they could really knock the wind out of your affiliate ppc campaigns-leaving you on the ground gasping for air.
I say, bring on the Google Slaps, I’m READY! And I’ll tell you how you can be ready too.
Right now the Google quality score, that determine your minimum bids looks at the following factors:
- How targeted your ad is to your keywords
- The “quality” of your landing page (including bounce rates)
Now be ready because future Google slaps are going to make life harder and harder for a lot of affiliates. Here’s what you can expect:
- A much stricter, tougher landing page quality score evaluation. Google is going to keep raising the bar. Before long they’ll be taking into consideration pagerank, how often fresh content is added to your landing page, how old your domain name is, and every other factor that’s considered for SEO.
- Stricter requirement on how targeted your keywords is to your Google ad, your already seeing this is more competitive niches.
Now I know a lot of you have found loopholes to get around Google’s quality score. For example, changing your URL every time you get slapped. That may work for a while be eventually Big-G will catch on!
So what am I doing to keep Big-G happy and my minimum bids nice and low? Here’s what I do in a nutshell:
- Make uber-tightly targeted ad groups, put the keyword in the ad at least once. You should be doing this one anyway, right? If you’re not doing this, start doing it right away, it will lower your minimum bid. And NO, dynamic keyword insertion will NOT help your quality score, and will NOT lower your minimum bid.
- Build an SEO site with pages targeted towards PPC. In other words do both SEO and PPC at the same time. I had a chance to speak with top super affiliate Jeremy Palmer today, and he’s now using the same strategy.
So the real question in my mind was why is Google doing this? Is this a conspiracy to take out affiliates so Google can take over their space and cash in themselves?
No, actually that’s not the case AT ALL!
Step back for a moment and envision a quality score free world, a world where as long at your CTR is above 0.5% your ads would run. A world where you can bid 0.01 and your ads would run. Sound like a dream world? A world of limitless profits?
Actually, NO AGAIN!
Here what would happen as competition increases in this zero quality score Google slap free world: more and more advertisers (read - flood of affiliates with ugly one page landing pages they throw together with frontpage) flood every possible niche and market out there, as a result the bid prices will go higher, and higher, and HIGHER.
Eventually, the bid prices will get so high that most advertiser will be squeaking by with a tiny ROI, or breaking even just acquiring a customer (NOT good for affiliates doing CPA). And forget the people still bidding 0.05, they’re on page 12.
So here’s what Google’s goal is by introducing a more and more stringent quality score: they want to keep raising the bar on the quality to make sure the user experience is high AND make sure their advertisers are always making a nice profit.
I want you to really think about this, as Google raises the bar for any given niche/keyword, more advertiser will have their ads bumped. This way Google can assure that bid prices stay low enough so that the advertiser that don’t get bumped are making good profits.
A smaller supply of advertisers means lower bid prices and more profits for advertisers that survive the Google slaps. Profitable advertiser are happy advertisers that will continue to give millions of dollars to Google!
I don’t know about you but I’m super excited about this! If you’re willing to comply with Google quality score rules, you’re just going to keep making more and more money!
And you know what, most affiliate won’t comply with Google, that’s more profit for me and YOU if you take my advise! 
Posted in Google™ AdWords | 
For a long time until now, I’ve been dreading the quality score updates. Although after reading your perspective, you make an interesting point about the usefulness of the Quality Score updates.
I think we all know that there’s going to be a flood of affiliates in the next 6 months - 5 years+ coming into the market. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to prepare for this, and it seems like any affiliate marketing is simply becoming ‘how to run a good business.’ As long as we run our campaigns as a business, with long term sustainability in mind, we will be ahead of all the affiliates with short sighted thinking.
Amit, question for you. In the past you’ve clearly said that the Quality Score only affects your minimum bid, and not your actual CPC. Are you sure about this? Can you share your source of this information, or further insight on this?
Hi Amit,
I think the undertone to your post is to build as organic a website as possible. Make it look and prefably be a content site with relevant content. The converts with a 15 page content site may not be as high as a single landing page, but I think the overall user experience will be enhanced.
Re: The user point of view. I’ve been to a number of single page landing pages and I guess I don’t quite feel fulfilled submitting my details…Maybe it because there’s no “About Us” page (one of the first things I look at at a new site), or no “Contact Us” page. (Both of which are factors in CS, as well as a privacy policy).
You might seen it as twisted on G’s part, but perhaps one of their secondary intentions (after satisfying shareholders and advertisers) is to make their pages more human user friendly, rather than just satisfying SE algos…
I would have to agree with Andrew (and Amit, of course) about one-page landing pages. Unless it’s a lead where the user just has to enter some very non-specific information about themselves, I have always had a hunch that multi-page, “real” sites are way more effective in terms of conversion. So many of those sales letter type pages come off to me like a used car salesman in a polyester suit with slicked back hair. Still, they do seem to work on some people. I know the one-page landers do still work, but for how much longer? I never would have believed they worked in the first place!
wondering if andrew took those into account when creating the keyword list [and/or] landing page to his new “launch and scrap” site:http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/temp/harrypotter/
Good points Amit and all. Let’s think about the end consumers too, the ones that ultimately pay us… I’m sure that’s a big part of Google’s concern.
If quality wasn’t controlled and a “flood of affiliates with ugly one page landing pages they throw together with frontpage” was allowed to happen, I’m sure fewer and fewer consumers would even be clicking on sponsored ads. Joe Surfer would eventually learn it wasn’t worth even looking at “those side ads” and everyone would lose out.
So while quality score updates make it harder for affiliates that want it quick and easy, I do think it forces the cream to rise to the top. Affiliates like Amit, Jeremy and Andrew in the end will be able to generate more revenue, with less competition, as they take the time to build quality sites and landing pages that pass the big G test and benefit the consumer.
I wrote about this some time ago here: http://www.here.org.uk/google-adwords-landing-pages-how-to-build-a-page-that-wont-get-banned-with-examples Basically mini sites are the way forward instead of landing pages. Even better, build your mini site into a full site and watch the organic traffic come in for free!
Whilst Google is making things harder for a lot of affiliates it will ensure that the cream will indeed rise to the top. So from my point of view its a positive step that Google are taking.
Linda: Although the short term definitely hurts, your point “So while quality score updates make it harder for affiliates that want it quick and easy, I do think it forces the cream to rise to the top.” certainly moves the industry towards more long term and long tail campaigns.
-
sam: “wondering if andrew took those into account when creating the keyword list [and/or] landing page to his new “launch and scrap””
> I’m on a different traffic gen model here, using social traffic/networking and referral traffic. No plans to use PPC or SEO strategies as yet. (short term as you’ve mentioned, hence the /temp/ directory), so the CS/QS issue doesn’t come in.
Brilliant points well made Amit.
I’ve been working on the strategy you mention for a few months now. Many of my PPC landing pages are now sites with unique content. A lovely side effect of this has been that I now generate a reasonable amount of organic sales to help keep my margins healthy.
I was amazed at the number of affiliates who were slapped during the last adwords algo change who just didn’t want to listen to the fact that thin content pages just ain’t gonna work any more. No skin off my nose. There’s more traffic and sales now for affiliates who lift their game to deal with every Google slap.
I’ve lost 50% or more of my income around 3 times now. Has it stopped me? Nope. Why? Because I’m prepared to accept I have to change how I operate to fit Google’s requirements. If I don’t, my business dies and I have to stop going on exotic holidays.
I think not!!!!
Excellent post Amit! I’m currently building a site from scratch that will encompass the strategies you’ve mentioned here and in previous posts. What I will have working against me to a certain degree however, will be the age of my domain that I registered only a few weeks ago.
Even if my Quality Score on my Adwords keywords are high - OK to Great, I’m still being slapped by Google. There is more content on the website I am promoting than products. I used to make money, but since getting slapped all the time, I guess I need to find another way to promoting websites.
My Adwords Ads have since stopped since since I need to pay at least $6 for each keyword.
Jeremy Palmer has written a detailed, 10-page report on how to get good Quality Scores - http://www.quityourdayjob.com/qualityscore.pdf