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In the Affiliate Summit West (in Vegas) this last January I had a chance to talk to quite a few affiliates about what they thought about Google’s new landing page “quality” score, and the recent Google slaps, that put a lot of advertisers out of business.

I sensed anger and frustration from most affiliates. And I sympathize with that. I somehow survived the first Google slap in July, however, after the second Google Slap in November, I felt like I got punch in the abdomen-I was on the ground gasping for air.

I was scared, and on the verge of panicing, 75% of my traffic & income was gone!?! Once I calmed down I decide to take a whole new approach to my internet marketing efforts, I research everything I could about how to build a site that will make Google happy. And here’s the mindset you have to have: if I was building an SEO site and sending PPC traffic to it, how would I set it up?

With that thought in mind here’s some guidelines to building a site that will make Big-G happy:

1. Make sure you have at least 10-15 pages of unique content on your site, including a privacy policy, and a Contact Us page. And I do mean unique, not something ripped off from ezinearticles.com. Go to elance.com and hire a writer to write you articles for $10 a pop. And don’t tell me you don’t have a $150 to invest into building your site, your affiliates site is going to make you $1000s a month in profits, right? Then stop getting hung up over making a small investment into your business!
2. Have a link to a site map at the bottom of your site, so the Googlebots can easily read your whole site.
3. Have a ‘Resources’ link at the bottom also, that goes to a page that has outgoing links to respected, high-’trust’ sites in your niche. Be sure to throw in .org and .edu sites in there, Google loves that.
4. Add fresh content to your site on a regular basis, this could be a few articles a week.
5. Have targeted landing pages for your adgroups that have highly targeted and relevant content. Here’s what I mean, if you have two adgroups: widgets, and gadgets. Be sure to that your widgets adgroup goes to a page about widgets, and has substantial unique content about widgets. Likewise, make sure your gadgets adgroups, goes to a page about gadgets, and has lots of content talking about gadgets.

If you follow the above 5 steps, chances are you’ll get a good quality score for 90%+ of your keywords.

Many of you may already know these 5 steps, and will decide NOT to follow then! When I was at the affiliate summit, I hardly found one affiliate who was actually interested in making a Google happy site (we’ll call it that for now ). Most of them wanted to find a work around to the system. Some affiliates have decided that they’ll just change their display and destination URL every time a Google Slap comes around. Changing URLs seems to work so far.

As far as I’m concerned, this is just the lazy affiliate mindset!

You may think you can outsmart Google, and you may be able to do it in the short run, but honestly don’t you think Big-G will catch on? I mean come on, they hire the top minds in the world.

Here are some of the advantages of playing by the rules and building a real site for Google:

1. You never have to worry about future Google Slaps.
2. If you setup targeted landing pages with unique relevant content, chances are your conversions will take a jump (yes people ACTUALLY read the content on your site, especially if it’s relevant).
3. You’ll have a competitive advantage over other affiliates, since most affiliates will try to dodge the rules. Your quality score will continue to improve over time as you grow your site and make more targeted land pages, you’ll receive more and more traffic.
4. As you keep growing your site and you’ll get more and more free search engine traffic in the long run.
5. Your site will look and feel like a real website, and again, this will help your conversions.

Some of you may have 30 affiliate sites, and dread the idea of having to add content to everyone. I would take this approach: chances are that you make 80% of your profits from the top 20% of your sites, build those sites up.

I personally know super-affiliates who have dozens of affiliates sites, and make very good money. But let me ask you, how long term do you think this approach is? Click costs are going up every year, markets are becoming more and more competitive, Google will continue to tighten it landing page “quality” score requirements.

In fact, Google does not want people throwing up quick landing pages to make a fast buck, it wants people building and growing real sites, just like you would build and grow a REAL BUSINESS (there is a tip in that!)

So sure, the “let’s make 20 affiliates sites a month” approach may work in the short run, but in the long run you’re dead in water! There’s no way your going to be able to keep up with the increasing competition in dozens of different markets plus increasingly strict Google quality score requirements.

The bottom line is that you need to build a small handful of affiliate sites and keep growing them, split testing your pages, and responding to market changes, etc etc. Over time your affiliate sites will become a powerhouses, bring in MASSIVE sales from both ppc and free search engine traffic.

An excellent example is Rosalind Gardner’s Sage-hearts.com, this site was build for long term profitability. Rosalind is continually adding new content, and constantly changing the design and look of the site.

Do YOU have a strategic approach to affiliate marketing that’s based on building long term profits or just short term gain?