From Great Quality Score to Slap in 3 months

[tbp]

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It seems to me that the more experienced affiliates on this forum are gradually moving away from PPC towards SEO

Its a shame! I`ve always gone for SEO first and PPC second. The campaign in questions web site was at number 1 in google, UK and Worldwide, so can't do any better.

It still got a significant amount of traffic through PPC though, and its a blow to lose it.

I really think google have messed up with this - they lose out in terms of lost revenue, and the public lose out as there are many good affiliate sites out there that actually add value, and help them make a more informed purchasing decision.

Banning all affiliate sites isn't going to help anyone.

[tbp]

The way forward is to create informative websites which provide visitors with original, useful content

I have actually done this, and several people have looked at the site and agreed, and I still got slapped.

All the normal affiliate links were done through redirects, but there were 2 banners on the page which were direct affiliate links, so I wonder if it was these and maybe google wouldn't of realised that it was an affiliate site otherwise.

I had all the standard pages like contact us, privacy policy etc

[ian-d]

Lets hope this scheduled maintainance work google have planned resolved the issue, my 'copy of the original' that activated this morning has failed again this afternoon, loosing me hundreds. Couple that with my merchant sites suffering from hosting issues and i've no doubt lost thousands!

[tonyr]

Kungfumobiles - the point is that we have went to the trouble to create decent sites and still got slapped.

The merchant had asked to see my site and they were very happy with the site and the sales it was bringing in. It was not in an area that was saturated with PPC ads. There were only 2-4 ads per keyword. The conversion rate was good and the customers did not return the products, so they were getting what they were searching for.

I agree with you about moneysupermarket and the other large affiliate sites. Let's be honest, there's no way that a one man band, part-time affiliate, starting out can create a service that will even remotely compare to what these huge sites can offer the customer. No matter how hard we work there is a limit to what can be achieved.

It's like the big supermarkets killing off the small shops. It happens in all industries eventually. I think the window of opportunity for the small business on the Internet is closing (but I hope I'm wrong).

[tbp]

The question is do our sites offer something that is unique and isn't just a quote about "We rate this product as good so click here to help me earn commission", it has got to be about the users and providing them with a service that helps them have a better "Internet experience".

I think my site did, and others have agreed. Because I dedicate whole sites to single products, I have room for a lot more info about the product that the merchant can offer. I had collected many more product images than any single merchant offered, a lot of extra information about the product, and also a price comparison to help the browser get the best price.

This makes the browser more informed about the product, to make sure it is really what they want.

This seemed to work very well, in the fact that the conversion rate was 50 - 60%, which is pretty high for an affiliate site. There was no hard sell, no big yellow highlights etc, simply the facts about the product helping the browser to make sure it was right for them. In the end the site sold the customer, and they went to the merchant site to buy, not to read the same info again and then think about buying.

I like to think all my sites are high quality, its more work, but i get rewarded by the fact that they have much better conversion rates than single page spammy sites, which are all in your face hard sell. You don't need to do that, if the customer is happy its what they want they will buy it, and I don't want any of the people clicking through my link to be unhappy with the product because its been misrepresented.

Its the pure inconsistency that annoys me. If google thinks my site quality is "poor", why have they put it at number 1 in their search results, and why have the rest of my sites gone to number 1 in the recent updates?

They can't say its crap in one breath, but good enough to rank at number 1 in another, thats complete rubbish.

Having a look around in the last 24 hours, it also seems very unfair that some really useless sites have survived, which are just a copy of the merchants product description, so the user has to see it twice to buy the product, which is just a waste of time really.

Also annoys me that Google have seen fit to take my money for the last 5 months, but now suddenly i`m not good enough for them, even though all of their webmaster guidelines have been followed.

In the end there is nothing I can do about it, and I really doubt i`ll get a decent response to them. I feel they have really let themselves down on this this one, and are cutting off their nose to spite their face. They are going to lose a lot of revenue from all the ad's that are no longer running, and aren't offering a better service because theres still a lot of useless spammy sites which have been allowed to continue.

It's their system though, and they can do what they want, but this isn't going to do them any favours and will just push more income into their competitors pockets needlessly.

< /End of Rant>

[Stellar]

I got slapped hard last year and all of my campaigns received £5 min bids.. my adverts were going to my sites (not direct to merchant) which had only unqiue content that did add real value to the user. Yet other sites were still showing up in the sponsored links that added little value what so ever. I queried it with Google, and in typical Google fashion, they offered no real information at all.

So I stopped using Adwords there and then.

Essentially there is often no logic to what Google does. It wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and slaps you silly.

Whats the answer? Never, ever, rely on one company. No business can survive if it is totally reliant on another business. So diversify. Obviously Google is still important, but also look into other traffic sources.

I personally concentrate on SEO with Google, rather the Adwords. It takes a lot longer, but if you have high quality sites, you can get to the top of organic ranks for the very same sites that get slapped in Adwords. But I'm also looking into other ways to get traffic that does not rely on a single search engine. Its hard, but this business is hard.

[tonyr]

What a rant, tbp!
It seems that PPC is going to be dominated by merchants, agencies, brand bidders, big affiliate sites etc and the small affiliates will be pushed out.

Well tbp you've got a winning formula there, creating really good informative sites that do well at SEO.

Maybe, when you put up a new site you could use adwords to get some sales initially and to find out conversion rates, converting keywords etc and when the inevitable slap comes after a few months, your SEO efforts should be kicking in by then!

I think I am finding out the hard way that I will have to change my whole approach to this business.

[Dazza30]

How does google treat affiliates using adsense on their sites ?

[andrewshipway]

Google stated on there site they did not like price comparison sites, either..

After working for a large paid search agency (as SEO Exec not PPC ) I kind of realised that there is an extreme hatred towards affiliate websites using PPC. These companies spend millions every year (maybe even every month) on PPC and from my experience the account managers were on the phone every other day complaining to Google account managers about affiliate sites bidding on brands.

Now I'm as upset as everyone else about the way affiliate sites are being targeted (a few of my sites got slapped last year, so I concentrated on SEO) but in my opinion I can only see things going downhill if these major agencies are going to have their way. They are the real spenders on PPC and Google will listen to them rather than affiliates.

The way forward is to create informative websites which provide visitors with original, useful content. How you do this and still use PPC I'm not too sure as in the end if you are linking through with an affiliate link then Google are likely to somehow penalise your site but for now comparison websites, cashback sites, blogs and voucher sites seem to be the way forward.

[andrewshipway]

Money supermarket haven't been slapped. They were at the top when I searched for loans this morning. However, I guess google wouldn't slap them. They must spend a fortune on ppc.

I'm surprised google hasn't slapped kelkoo, just because they can, isn't it owned by yahoo?

Without seeing your site its kind of difficult to point out the reasons but I guess what I am saying is that unless your site is providing a real service to visitors then your PPC campaigns are going to get slapped.

Now when I say a "real service" I mean sites like u-switch, Kelkoo, Gocompare, MoneySuperMarket etc., I bet these sites have not had the problems affiliates have had. But why? They are basically based on the same principles as the majority of affiliate comparison websites but on a larger scale, earning commissions on visitors who are redirected through their sites.

The question is do our sites offer something that is unique and isn't just a quote about "We rate this product as good so click here to help me earn commission", it has got to be about the users and providing them with a service that helps them have a better "Internet experience".

Again, I just want to say I'm not dissing anyones site as you may provide the above already but if we are going to move forward with affiliate sites and PPC then more thought has to be put into it and guidelines shoud be made.

Ps. I hate using "quotes", don't know why I've done it so much in this post.

[Stellar]

How does google treat affiliates using adsense on their sites ?

I had my adsense account suspended for no reason. I did not break any of their terms and my sites are unqiue, value adding sites. I can only assume they decided to suspend me because I carry some affiliate links. Either that, or they have lost the plot entirely.

[andrewshipway]

I can't remember where. I had a search, but can't find it again....

I just took off the google site:

There is no problem in being an affiliate as long as you create some added value for your users and produce valuable content that gives a user a reason to visit your site. For example, you could create product reviews, ratings, and product comparisons.æ

I wonder if its just retarted graduates who manually review the sites, and get rid of any affiliate sites they find what so ever, because they don't know what they are doing.

Where? Should be an intersting read.

[chrisuk]

Google don't like affiliates and they don't like the following at all.

-price comparision
-ppc affiliates (eg ppc partner sites, esp YSM)
-cpa affiliates with thin ( and not so thin sites )

There are exceptions, brand and size of operation play a role, MoneySupermarket etc is really just a big affiliate site but have a lot of suplimentary content and reach - read useful experience, you can't compete with their presence thats why their ads still run.

Even effective arbitrage sites that have real content running sponsoreds are not getting away with it except for Google bum buddy ASK.com who have no landing page content at all but they have both brand and are a Google search partner (someone with clout should REALLY call the press over that) tut tut TUT! because that is blatant abuse of fair competition and totally invalidates the supposed reasons for Adwords QS.

However its not just tiny weenie affiliates who Google are squashing, for what I think is one of the best reads of the week, have a browse over this little article, its all about a company called Geosign and what happens when you wake up and find Google no longer like you!

You won't like what you read but what it will do is encourage you even more to look away from Adwords as much as possible for income and traffic because whatever variant of aff marketing you use, with just Adwords you are very vunerable.

[MattSweet]

I wonder if its just retarted graduates who manually review the sites, and get rid of any affiliate sites they find what so ever, because they don't know what they are doing.

I remember a few years back when I worked for PPC agency and some google editorial 'experts' came in to help us write good ads.

They were all Oxbridge grads and they were talking us through writing 70 character ads... They couldn't speak a sentence without adding uneccessary waffle let alone write a good ad. The worrying thing was they all completely bought into the whole google thing. If it's these guys doing editorials on landing sites then there's no hope.

ps - anyone know how to change the r.o.eye text under my user name as I no longer work there? I've looked all through the profile pages...

[jezaff]

google says they dont like comparison sites and some(?) affiliate sites:

The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it's important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.
eBook sites that show frequent ads
'Get rich quick' sites
Comparison shopping sites
Travel aggregators
Affiliates that don't comply with our affiliate guidelines