Is Adwords trying to filter out Affiliate Marketers?

As many of you know Google has recently introduced a few new tweaks to the infamous Quality Score mechanism that calculates the minimum bid on particular keywords.

The Quality Score is a direct measure of the quality of your landing page in relation to the keyword you are bidding on. Like me, many Affiliates have noticed an increase in the minimum bid across the board:

• Webmaster World Thread
• Digital Point Thread

It’s no suprise to me that Google is constantly trying to improve the quality of sites & landing pages, especially after the update to the Adsense page quality terms & conditions that was announced last week.

In the threads above you’ll notice that even people with relatively high performing keywords (8% + CTR) have been hit. For those of us that made a killing from sending affiliate offers directly to the merchants website a few years ago, you will know all too well that this just doesn’t work too well anymore, high minimum bids make profit margins very small. But we adapted & started creating highly targeted landing pages that brought the minimum bids down & made the campaigns profitable again.

My own personal views on the recent changes are that Google is trying to increase the quality of sites advertising on Adwords by pushing up minimum bids. In doing so only the Affiliates that are smart enough to adapt will continue. It’s no real surprise that there’s a lot of newbie affiliates out there all sending traffic directly to the merchant page bidding on hundreds of untargeted keywords that won’t convert & in the end driving up my costs. I personally think they are looking now at much more than just the landing page on its own but more the entire structure & theme of the surrounding website (if it exists).

So what can you do about the recent changes?

This is the question that everyone is asking, it’s also something I personally feel Google needs to be much more open about in the Adwords Guidelines.

Well, lets look at how Google defines a Quality Landing Page?

The whole article is a bit vague, however you can see in a round about way some of the things they are now looking at on Landing Pages.

So, here are my tips for increasing your Quality Score in accordance to the Adwords Policies:

Provide relevant and substantial content.

If you’re not using the keywords that you’re bidding on within the content of the page is it going to be deemed as relevant in the eyes of the Adwords QS bot?

Relevant content means:

1. Including Keywords on the Page
2. Having Content on the Page & not just images
3. Not using scraped content & dup content
4. If you have Ads on the page you need to distinguish them from the rest of the content

Number 4 is interesting, perhaps the Google QS Bot is now looking for landing pages with Adsense Ads & then checking to see if they are disclosed. Although this is merely a thought.

Be upfront about your services and offers and how they are provided.

Make sure your website includes the following:

1. About Us
2. Contact Page

Treat a user’s personal information responsibly

This is short for make sure your website has a privacy policy. There are plenty of resources around the internet to help you create one of these.

Develop an easily navigable site.

I’ve personally found that my Quality Score greatly increases for a landing page when that page is part of a larger website. Landing Pages that exist without the presence of a larger structure don’t seem to do as well.

Other tricks that have worked well for me:

1. Masking Affiliate Links
2. Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Landing Pages
3. Using Adcenter more

It’s becoming harder & harder for Affiliates to take the easy route out. I can only see it getting harder & harder as time goes on.

My advice is, build quality websites & structure your Affiliate Offers & Landing Pages around the website. These types of sites generally don’t get slammed or banned. But this involves much more work than throwing up a generic landing page?

Which is exactly what I think Google is trying to weed out.