Internet Marketing & Beyond

Google has had a policy in place against so-called affiliate bridge pages for quite a while. Basically, their policy states that you can’t have a page that is there for the sole purpose of taking people from a PPC ad to someone else’s product.

Let me clarify for you. If you are an affiliate for company XYZ, marketing that company’s Red Widget, Google says that you cannot have a single page with the sole purpose of getting people to buy red widgets from you, instead of buying them directly from Company XYZ. It’s OK for Company XYZ to have a single-page site for the sole purpose of selling red widgets, because they own those widgets. You don’t, therefore, you can’t.

With Google, they claim it’s all about a good user experience. What they fail to take into consideration and fail to put into their equation when calculating the quality of a user experience, is that some people are just plain looking for red widgets and don’t care if they buy them from you or from Company XYZ. Google’s logic is seriously flawed, but there’s no changing their minds about any of it. They are Google, which is just another way of spelling “arrogant”. Oh, and you might want to try to fit “stupid” in there too.

If john doe surfer is searching for blue shoes to buy and your ad says that you have blue shoes for sale, then what’s not a good user experience about you selling John blue shoes?

According to Google, you need to give John lots of relevant information about blue shoes. You need to tell John all about the history of blue shoes. You also need to do some market comparisons of different brands of blue shoes. And, while you’re at it, you might as well tell him how to lace up and tie those blue shoes. Then, and only then, will Google begin to think that you’re giving their precious users a good experience.

Here’s how Google defined it to me on the phone and in an email.

A user should want to visit your site even if they are not buying something. If a user visits your site and you give them something of value, such as information, then the user will be happy and Google says that this is a good user experience.

Information is good, but not everyone is looking for information!! HELLO Google…

Have you forgotten that a good number of people today use the web to shop? Or is that not good for their experience.. to buy something without reading through 5 pages of other crap first????

OK.. end of rant (I think).

Like it or not, we have to learn to deal with Google or we will eventually be driven out of marketing on Google. As marketers, we are being forced to build complete, informative sites in order to market as affiliates. It’s sad, but it’s true. The days of one-page sites are coming to a close.

You may have some really nice, really profitable one-page sites out there. Enjoy them while they last, because sooner or later Google will see your page and shut your ads down until you comply with their wishes and build out pages of useless information, which will only serve to lower your conversion rates.

Remember, Google is the search engine god and they like to flaunt that to everyone. Maybe they should flaunt it to their stock holders now that their stock is only worth half what it was a few months ago.

Someday… maybe someday Google will get a glimpse of reality and learn to bend a bit, instead of trying to rule with an iron fist and drive completely legitimate marketers away.

Anyway, go and make some money!

Be blessed,

Curt

p.s. If you have ads or keywords that get rejected by Google, don’t call or email them to ask why. This will only draw their attention to your site and might give them cause to look more closely and then disable your campaign for using a bridge page. Quietly delete the rejected ads or keywords and move on… Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell.

How often have you been doing market research or keyword research, and when you get search results, you click on a PPC ad to see the landing page?

Let’s turn the tables for a minute now. Let’s say someone else is doing market research and keyword research, and they click YOUR ad? Hmm.. seems like a little bigger deal now, doesn’t it?? That random click just cost you money, just like it cost the other marketer money when you clicked on their ad!

What to do??

First of all, when doing research, NEVER click on the ads of another marketer. You wouldn’t like it if they did it to you, so don’t do it to them. What goes around, comes around… right?

Just as importantly, let me tell you how to do research without even racking up impressions on your ads… or anyone else’s ads.

Instead of going to Google.com to do market research or ad testing, go here: Adwords WW

Using this tool will allow you to search and do research, without causing anyone to accrue impressions on their keywords and ads, thereby not hurting anyone’s CTR. This is an awesome way to check to see where your own ads are showing for any given keyword too, again without racking up impressions and hurting your CTR.

Remember… as with anything else, even in the marketing world, what you give is what you get.

Now, go make some money!

Be blessed,

Curt

Google has recently made a major change in their keyword research tool that has internet marketing people pretty excited!

It used to be that when you used the Google keyword tools, the results would never show you actual search volume, but a bar graph, instead, showing relative search volume.

Now, instead of a plain bar graph, you get to see actual search volume numbers.

This is a HUGE breakthrough, in my opinion, because you no longer have to guess about search volume for a given keyword.

Let me explain. Because the old bar graphs showed their height based on relative volume, a tall bar graph might look exciting, but didn’t necessarily mean that there was, in fact, high search volume for that keyword or phrase.

Now, with actual search volume numbers right in front of you, it isn’t hard to see if the numbers are what you’re looking for or not.

Thanks, Google, for finally making a change that is definitely in the marketer’s favor.