Google is one of the biggest phenomenon’s this world has ever seen. If you are looking to become a professional marketer then learning the in’s and out’s of Google will be essential to your long term success. Before you ever enter the world of Google there is some important information you need to know. Google is against marketers that have websites that are obvious sales letters for “work from home”, and “get rich quick” opportunities. They are also putting the hammer down on affiliate marketers who are marketing with affiliate links. Gone are the days of replicated websites, capture pages, and affiliate marketing sales letters. This crackdown by Google is called the “Google Slap.”

When marketing on the Internet always make sure you are thinking about what will make Google happy. Do whatever you can to make them your best friend. Don’t ever try to cheat their system because they will find you and the repercussions will be costly. If Google catches anyone that violates their terms and conditions, they will face possible account suspension or could be banned for life. The Google slap is not fun. It can cripple a business.

The good news is if you give Google what they are looking for, you can have a very prosperous relationship with them for years to come.

Here are some important guidelines to follow if you are going to be marketing in the “work from home” and “affiliate marketing niche” and you want to avoid “The Google Slap”.

1. Build your website on a blogging platform such as WordPress. It’s best to have a self-fully hosted WordPress blog.

2. Make sure your site has a Google Sitemap.

3. Have pages on your site that include a home page, about page, and contact page.

4. Use the right keywords and meta tags on your site.

5. Register a domain name. Your domain name should generic and not cheesy or salesy. It’s most effective to use your name as your domain which will help in personal branding.

6. Attach any affiliate links to a contact or resources page. It’s best to not have affiliate offers posted all over your site.

7. Include an opt-in form from Aweber in a visible location which entices visitors to enter their email address in exchange for a valuable offer or return of information. Be very clear on what the offer or information is that you will be providing.

8. Have high ranking back links attached to your site from sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

9. Outbound links. Have links to other high profile articles and websites.

10. Don’t talk about money on your site. Money claims are a fast way to get Google slapped.

If you truly want to avoid the Google slap just give Google what they want. Provide them with good solid content such as blog posts, articles, and press releases, a website that’s not a sales pitch or affiliate offer, attach high profile inbound and outbound links, and make your website easy to navigate. When a visitor goes to your website they should be able to find out about your story, your business, and leave with valuable and helpful information. If you give your prospect and Google what they are looking for, Google will be your best friend for life.

Important Google Update, December 2009

If you are a past or present advertiser on Google, you may be aware of their recent agressive enforcement of advertising policies and guidelines. While some advertisers have been temporarily inconvenience by the ”slap” (i.e. their advertising costs have skyrocketed) some advertisers have had their advertising accounts banned for life. The following article, written by Brittany Lynch, does a great job explaining what Google has been up to as well as what steps you must take in order to be successful advertising on Google.

“The Big Ban” by Brittany Lynch

First things first let’s clarify a common misconception. AdWords is not banning accounts for no reason. They have a reason, and from a consumers (someone who searches on Google) perspective it’s a damn good reason. So what is the reason that Google is straight out banning accounts, not just campaigns, but accounts for LIFE.

Let’s first look at what one current Google Employee posted on the webmasterworld.com forum.

“In keeping with our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, we spend a tremendous amount of time and effort monitoring the quality of our search and ad results. As we’ve stated many times before, Google’s primary focus is on delivering the best possible search experience to our end users. To help further this goal, we work with our advertisers in a number of different ways to help them design and run the best ads possible.

Unfortunately, some online advertisers continue to promote services and websites that do not help, and in some cases could harm, our users. For instance, these advertisers may offer free services that bait users into accepting hidden fees. Or these advertisers may attempt to deliver malware to unsuspecting web citizens. Regardless of the practice, these types of campaigns do not benefit our users and we therefore take steps to enforce our policies and prevent such advertisers from running ads through our systems.

Over the last decade Google has implemented a number of systems and processes to identify and disable ads that direct users to these offending websites. However, the ad disabling procedures have resulted in ongoing back and forth between us and these questionable advertisers as they try to outsmart our systems and processes. Therefore, we’re being stricter with advertisers who deliver a bad user experience by permanently disabling AdWords accounts that engage in prohibited behavior.

Recently we began implementing this new account disabling. As a result, many advertisers who provide a poor user experience and have previously had their ads disabled will now have their accounts disabled.

We take our user, advertiser and publisher experiences very seriously, and remain dedicated to delivering only the highest quality advertising results to our users. We believe this new process of permanently disabling accounts will markedly improve the overall experience of our users, advertisers and publishers.”

Deconstructed

As the above quote mentions – Google has sent out warnings and campaign suspensions in the past. I’m sure many of you are aware of the concept of the Google Slap – where by Google drops your quality score down to a 1/10 due to poor landing page quality. Some of you were probably slapped in the past.

Google did not drop your quality score for NO reason and they didn’t drop it because they don’t like you. They dropped it because your campaign was in violation of Google’s advertising policy.

Some of you may not have received these warnings in the past, but the network of AdWords advertisers is like an ecosystem, and when one person or a large group of people break the AdWords policy rules, it affects the rest of the advertisers. This results in your AdWords account being banned if it has or has in the past, made even the slightest misuse of the AdWords system.

Google has made it very clear how much the AdWords system values transparency and relevancy. I don’t believe that Google has ever hidden the fact that this is what they want out of their advertisers on the landing page for an AdWords campaign. But for some reason or another, perhaps because of how ‘easy’ using Google AdWords has been made to appear and how low-priced the entry point is, advertisers have gotten sloppy and have not done proper due diligence before using the system.

The following questions and answers are designed to quickly and easily assist you in ensuring your current and future AdWords accounts adhere to AdWords policy and therefore are not banned for life.

A note: Shortly you will hear me referring to the idea of providing a user landing on your AdWords landing page with useful and relevant content. I would like to clarify what I mean by ‘useful and relevant’ content as I believe this is very important.

What I mean by giving the user useful and relevant content is – provide substantial information on your landing page, that is related to your keywords that you are advertising on with Google AdWords. If you are advertising on the keyword “best Adwords ebook” I might first explain a bit about Adwords and what you should look for in a good Adwords ebook then I would do a detailed comparison of the top five most popular Adwords ebooks on the market. I might summarize what the book goes over and list the pros and cons of each book individually and in relation to the other books and I’d be honest. I’d really try to HELP the user on my page. I can still use affiliate links, but first make your AdWords landing page be of assistance to the user. The goal is to get them to actually read your content before they click through to the affiliate link.

Ask Yourself These Questions:

1) Are you directing AdWords traffic to a landing page with Adsense?

a. If you are, do so with extreme caution. In some cases having Adsense on your Google AdWords landing page is okay, but in my experience, only if you have a landing page that has a lot of useful and relevant content.

b. If your site looks like it exists for the purpose of showing Adsense ads, it will surely be banned. Don’t wait to see if Google will forget about you or overlook you. They won’t and you will be banned for life if you don’t make changes to your landing page.

c. When in doubt, do not put Adsense on your landing page – that is until you are certain that your site is set up in such a way that it is very obvious both to a computer and to a human that you are providing a user with quality information.

2) Would you gather useful information from the content on your AdWords landing page?

a. Put yourself in your user’s shoes. Would the majority of individuals who come to your website find value in your content? BE HONEST, it isn’t helping you if you aren’t honest with yourself. Ask friends for their opinion if you feel like you can’t determine the answer to this truthfully. Ask your friend what they learned on your landing page. If they can’t tell you anything substantial then consider adding more content.

3) Is your landing page filled with affiliate links?

a. Despite all the misinformation going around – Google does not hate affiliates. In fact I’ll quote Google right now “Affiliates and resellers are welcome to advertise with AdWords”

b. Google hates scammers and spammers who post up websites that have thin information. If you are an affiliate, start by making your own landing page when possible. Add lots of valuable content to your page. Really think about what information a person needs in order to make up their mind on whether that product or service is right for them. Then provide them with this information.

c. Don’t use bridge pages. These are pages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent (affiliate site) company.

d. Don’t use mirror pages. These are pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent affiliate site; your site should not mirror (be similar or nearly identical in appearance to) your parent company’s or any other advertiser’s site

4) Do you have a privacy policy, terms of service, about us page, sitemap, contact page? If you don’t should have all of these pages laid out with proper anchor text.

a. Basically make sure you have the following pages with the corresponding anchor text 1) privacy policy 2) terms of service 3) about us 4) sitemap 5) contact us. Adding these pages is very important and is often an overlooked step in many AdWords advertisers process. By adding these pages to your AdWords landing page you are complying with their transparency and navigability requirements

b. Also consider adding a 6th page – a Blog, especially if your landing page is only a one pager. If your landing page is a sales page or some of other type of page that you haven’t added additional valuable content to then add a blog page and link it at the end of your landing page where you provide the privacy policy, about us, etc. pages.

c. More than ever, it is CRUCIAL that you have a lot of useful content on your AdWords landing page.

5) Does your AdWords landing page exist ONLY to collect email addresses (or other private information)?

a. If so, you need to change your landing page. Add some valuable content. Make the content so valuable on your landing page that users will want to sign up for your newsletter.

b. Don’t try and trick them into signing up for your newsletter. Try putting the free e-book or article content that you were going to email the user, had they signed up for your newsletter, right on you’re landing page.

c. Sure some of the users may read the information on the landing page and leave right away but by putting the information on the landing page and not forcing the user to give you their email address in order to access this content, you are building their trust and setting the association in their mind that you are a helpful and useful person. In addition to this I would tend to argue that if the user does sign up for your landing page even after they have accessed your initial content, that they are a more qualified prospect to have on your list.

d. Still add an opt-in box above the fold (test the placement of the opt-in box) but ensure that your landing page has a ton of relevant and high quality, unique content that will be of use to those arriving on the page.

6) Does your site business fall under any of these categories?

a. Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information

b. Arbitrage sites that are designed for the purpose of showing ads

c. Affiliate sites that the primary purpose of which is to drive traffic to another site with a different domain

d. “Get-rich quick” sites

e. Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer

f. Poor comparison shopping or travel sites whose primary purpose is to send users to other shopping/travel comparison sites, rather than to provide useful content or additional search functionality. If your site does fall under one of these categories, don’t advertise with AdWords. Plain and simple AdWords tends not to like your sites business model and if you aren’t already banned, you will most certainly be banned soon. Don’t wait around for this to happen. Either change your business model so that it complies with AdWords policy or advertise elsewhere.

7) Are you promoting a website that makes income claims?

a. If you are, then you need to add an earnings disclaimer page. Most of you are probably aware that the FTC just changed their laws and require that any site promoting products that make claims on the amount of income a person can earn must have an earnings disclaimer that basically states that “it’s not normal to earn X a day claimed with this system, it’s possible but not normal”.

Are you promoting Rebill Offers?

a. If you try to run a rebill offer (i.e. Acai, Biz Op), you risk the chance of having your account banned. If you ran a campaign like this in past and it is paused, delete it immediately as even paused campaigns are considered offenders.

9) Consider how long users spend on your landing page

a. If I were Google, I would probably look at the amount of time a user spends on a webpage before clicking away in order to gauge the usefulness of a particular website. If the average time of the user on site is short, this is a good indication that users are not finding what they came to the site for. Make sure you set proper expectations for your site in your ad, and fill those expectations immediately after the user lands on your page.

10) Are you advertising date entry affiliate programs?

a. Google strictly prohibits advertiser’s promotion of data entry affiliate programs. This includes ads which direct users to sites that promote the creation or data entry of other ads directing users to the same site.

I still don’t think my site has broken any rules…why has it been banned?

a. Please note that some of the banned ACCOUNTS may have campaigns that are allowed according to Google AdWords policy. It takes just one campaign within an account that doesn’t follow the AdWords policy guidelines, to get your account banned.

b. If you have logged into your AdWords account on an IP address that has ‘illegal’ AdWords accounts under it, your account is also at risk of being banned. Google isn’t messing around anymore, no more warnings, no more dropped quality scores. If you ARE lucky enough to get a warning or a drop quality score, get your act together NOW and make the proper changes, because tomorrow you might not have the opportunity.

My AdWords account is banned, what can I do to get a new one?

a. Try emailing Google to let them know that you have reviewed the AdWords policy and understand where you went wrong with your past/s AdWords campaigns and that you have built a new landing page cited in the email, and that it adheres to all policy…see what they have to say, maybe they will let you reactivate an account….But don’t hold your breath for that. It is possible that they will re-review your site and permit you to advertise again. BUT I’m under the impression that especially right now, they are inundated with emails from advertisers who have been banned in the past few months, so there response time is most likely very slow.

b. An alternative method to getting a new AdWords account is get a new computer, and a new IP address, open up a new AdWords account under a new name and credit card, both of which should have different addresses than your original credit card used for your AdWords account, then try to open up a new AdWords account. This time, take what I have said into consideration and put time into building a high quality-landing page. I’ve said it enough but I’ll say it one more time – add value to the users experience on your landing page.

AdWords landing page checks happen continuously, even after an ad has been approved. These checks happen through automated methods and manual methods. Delete all ads and campaigns that do not adhere to the strictest form of AdWords policy, remember paused campaigns will still accrue violations against them.

Guys – all of us need to think about the importance of building a long-term sustainable business. Times are changing for Internet Marketers and we need to adapt. Stop trying to outsmart Google – whatever ‘solution’ you may find online advertised as a way to ‘beat’ Google, may work for a little while, but at least for the time being why try to battle a system that has so many more resources than you do? It’s just not a good business practice.

Parting Words

I can understand Google wanting to give their users a good search experience but admittedly the manner in which they are banning advertisers is shocking. If you are relying on AdWords alone as your sole source of traffic generation, you need to start diversifying your online marketing portfolio immediately. Consider other forms of traffic such as: PPV, Search engine optimization, social networking, media buys or even direct marketing. I try not to spend more than 15-20% of my marketing budget on any one source of traffic. Would you invest in just one stock? I hope not. But in any new marketing endeavor you start to do, make sure you put in time to research how to use the system properly, and whether the system requires it or not, add value to the user’s experience. I firmly believe that you can’t go wrong by giving the user a better experience.

Overall I still believe that AdWords is a great place to generate a good return on your money. Just be smart about how you use the system and put in the time to do proper research before you launch a campaign.

Basic Action Steps

Google has put together extensive training covering everything from setting up your AdWords account to writing and creating effective ads to managing and evaluating the effectiveness of your campaigns. We highly recommend going through this training before you even set up your account.

1. Google AdWords Training

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/

We recommend going through modules 1 through 7 first. The multimedia training, which is broken in to small sections within each module, will take approximately 6 hours to complete but don’t let that intimidate you as most of the training sections are less than 10 minutes each. Google also offers the same training in text format.

1. Introduction to AdWords (60 minutes)
2. Getting Started with AdWords (56 minutes)
3. Targeting (69 minutes)
4. Costs & Billing (34 minutes)
5. Tracking & Performance (85 minutes)
6. Optimizing Ad Performance (44 minutes)
7. The AdWords Toolbox (14 minutes)

2. Sign up for a Google AdWords account:

www.adwords.google.com

3. Launch Your First Campaign

Intermediate Strategies

Google also offers ongoing live training via webinar. These webinars cover both the basics as well as specialized topics. Check their live training schedule frequently for topics that interest you. Remember, this is a marketing strategy that will pay you huge rewards if you are willing to expend the time and energy to master it.

Intermediate Action Steps

1. Understanding Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool that will assist you in managing multiple campaigns.

Complete module 8 “Google Analytics” in the AdWords Learning Center (15 minutes) to learn more and see if this tool would be appropriate for the management of your marketing campaigns. It is not necessary to complete the last module (module 9 “Managing Your Client Accounts”) unless you are interested in managing other advertiser’s Google marketing campaigns as a business.

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/

2. Attend Google’s Live Webinar Training

http://www.google.com/events/training/

3. Tap into Additional Training Resources:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleBusiness

Intermediate Tips & Tricks

Advanced Marketer

While Google is widely considered the “grandaddy” of pay-per-click marketing, it is certainly not the only pay-per-click search engine out there. Mastering the basics of Google will equip you to easily move in to other pay-per-click search engines. These smaller search engines are great places to inexpensively test your ad copy in order to increase your click-through-rate and, ultimately, your conversions.

For an extensive list of other pay-per-click search engines go to the Directory at: www.payperclicksearchengines.com.

Tools & Resources

• The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords

Additional Pay Per Click Services:

• LookSmart (Pay Per Click)
• Adknowledge (Pay Per Click)
• Yahoo (Pay Per Click)
• Bing (Pay Per Click)
• Pay Per Click Search Engine Directory: PayPerClickSearchEngines.com

Customer Support Telephone Numbers:

• Google: 866-246-6453
• Yahoo: 866-747-7327
• Bing (MSN): 800-386-5550

Related Posts:

Definitive Guide to Google Adwords

Google Slap for Product Review Sites

The Google Slap and How to Survive and Rise Above it in 2010!

The Google Slap and Resolution

New Google Slap for Thin Affiliate Review Sites

*This Training Is Referenced From Carbon Copy Pro’s Marketing & Training System.

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