RS

Well - more like Rope-a-Doping a Google Slap - you will get hit occasionally.

Those of you who have experience with launching a Google PPC campaign most likely have felt the sting of a Google Slap - the sinking feeling when you watch what should be .5 cent keywords turn into $.50 and $1.00 keywords - in a lot of cases crippling your campaign altogether. It sucks - BIG TIME!

While there’s very little rhyme or reason to a Google Slap (Google’s stance is that it enhances a user’s experience if they are taken to advertiser sites that apparently are supposed to foremost educate the visitor - then if they hang around enough, perhaps - maybe - possibly they may buy something from you). Google rates your commitment to better humanity with your site on a scale called Quality Score. In typical Google secretive fashion, little is known about what factors make up a Quality Score - here’s what the IM community has figured out though:

Google Hates

• MFA - Made for Adsense - Adsense arbitrage sites
• Sales letter sites - those looooong one-pagers that Clickbank merchants are obsessed with
• Squeeze pages - landing pages setup to collect emails
• Affiliate landers - especially landers with a sole link to a affiliate link
• Direct linking - using your affiliate ID as your target URL in your Google ads

Yeah - that kinda puts a damper on just about every “easier money” technique.

So, what can be done to improve your chances of not suffering from baby shaken syndrome due to a slap?

1) Always develop a lander for your affiliate offer - never direct link. Beyond improving your QS, a lander allows you to pre-sell with targeted copy, compile a mailing list and have better control of tracking - among other advantages.

2) Design your lander as a “mini-site” - include a contact page, a privacy policy, about us page, a couple of outbound links to authority sites (wikipedia), and 3-4 pages of original article content (optional, but helpful)

3) Try to insert your keyword into your Adwords ad - If you have several prime keywords, create several adgroups.

4) Don’t stuff an adgroup with too many keywords and make sure all the keywords in an adgroup are related - having dozens of adgroups per campaign should be the norm.

5) Serve up fresh content - try to add a block of text, better yet a new page every few days to your “mini-site”

6) Install a Wordpress Blog on your domain and fill it (5-10 entries) with topic related info - link to this blog from your lander (this one helps QS a great deal)

Fighting with a secret computer algorithm can be frustrating but following these steps *should* lead you to a OK or GREAT quality score and those coveted $.05 and $.10 clicks.

- RightStarter

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 am and is filed under PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.