The word is out on the street that Google has once again updated its “Landing Page Quality Score” last week and it seems quite a few affiliates are howling over increased mininum bid prices.
Well you know what, I did not see any increases in my minimum bid prices, in fact I’ve noticed for many of my campaigns my minimum bid prices have actually dropped! 
I also saw an across the boards jump in traffic last Wednesday, although I’m not sure that was actually due to the landing page quality update.
So what am I doing that many ppc affiliates are not? Read my post on surviving the landing page quality score.
Making your sites Google happy, as far as the landing page quality score is concerned, is a total win-win-win situation:
- First off, you’ll be able to sleep at night, not worrying about the next Google Slap.
- You profits will increase for 3 reasons: you’ll have a real professional site, you’ll have laser targeted relevant content, you’ll get cheaper clicks.
- You’ll get free search engine traffic
- It will force you to focus your energy building up a handful of quality affiliate sites, that will ensure your long term profitability.
So for you whiners out there who are pissed off at Google, stop whining and start building real affiliate sites!
when testing new markets …do you still do a landing page/squeeze page ..full blown or minimalist? or would you consider doing direct linking… ever?
Hi Cris,
If you’re testing the market on Google Adwords I would recommend a full blown site, otherwise you’ll get Google slapped.
with respect to a site for testing (landing page, about us, privacy policy, etc)… is it ok to get articles about the topic from article directories to be replaced with articles written by ghostwriters once the viability of the marketplace has been determined.
or will duplicate content cause the quality score to drop
thanks for taking the time to answer the posts
Hi Cris,
Google Does penalize duplicate content. One way to test the waters is to start with MSN and Yahoo first, before you go to Big-G.