Topic: How to Avoid the Wrath of Google
The Death of the Thin Affiliate Website: Your Guide to Avoiding the AdWords Ban
In the wake of Google's mass ban of AdWords accounts which affected many APS members, I wanted to take a moment to write up some general guidelines for new members to follow to avoid a similar fate. Keep in mind that it is impossible to know exactly how to please Google. These guidelines should keep you safe and avoid the dreaded lifetime ban, but ultimately it's your responsibility.
1) Content is still KING! Never forget this adage. If you decide to go the pay per click (PPC) route, it's absolutely imperative that you send PPC traffic to a website that is choke-full of unique content that will provide value to your visitors. Be very careful using PLR articles for content unless you alter the articles enough to make the content completely unique. Also, your content pages can't contain a bunch of your affiliate links. This is a dead giveaway that your website is just trying to earn a commission from your visitors. You have to build a website that offers value first and foremost even if this means losing your visitors to another website or resource. At the end I'll talk more about unique content and how everyone regardless of technical know-how can build a database-driven website and easily insert unique content on a regular basis.
2) Don't keyword stuff! When targeting keywords keep your keyword density within an acceptable range. I would recommend a conservative 2-4% target. Use a free keyword density checker to analyze your pages.
3) Is your website old enough? Don't send AdWords traffic to a new website. Make sure your website is established and your domain name has been registered for awhile. If you don't remember when you registered your domain name you can perform a WHOIS search. If you are impatient then look to buy an expired domain. GoDaddy has expired domain auctions starting at $5 plus registration fees. You can usually find domains that are 5-10 years old that are very inexpensive. Just make sure to thoroughly research expired domains. Never buy a domain name that a previous affiliate marketer owned. Affiliate marketers don't let profitable domains expire unless there is a good reason. You can research a website's history at Archive.org. Also, you can enter site:www.yourdomainname.com into Google and click the Cached links to view a website's pages that have been previously indexed and cached. Check domain age with this free tool.
4) Register your domain name for more than one year. This is optional, but can't hurt. Affiliate marketers tend to register domains for only one year and then they renew them only if they become profitable. By registering and securing your domain name for many years it sends the message that this is a domain that you have long-terms plan for; not just a quick hit-and-run affiliate campaign to make a few bucks.
5) Avoid .info domains like the plague. Anyone serious about building a viable, long-term business on the Internet has no problem paying $6-$10 a year for domain registration. Only affiliate marketers who are taking the quantity over quality route are shopping for .99 cent domains.
6) Is your website indexed in Google? This should go without saying in light of this recent development with AdWords, but it's worth mentioning. Never send AdWords PPC traffic to your website if your website isn't even indexed in Google. Make sure all those pages of unique content that you have created are indexed first before even considering a PPC campaign. You can check your indexed pages by entering site:www.yourdomainname.com into Google's search engine.
If you are just starting out, it's very easy to get your website indexed by Google. After your website is built and you have added some unique content (unique being the operative word here) you can submit your website to Google to crawl here.
7) What's your Google PageRank? Google assigns PageRank to websites on a scale of 0-10. Make sure you have established PageRank with Google before running any PPC campaigns on Adwords. If your website has established PageRank then it has already received a vote of confidence from Google. This is probably the best indicator that you are now safe to run PPC campaigns on AdWords. I would recommend at least a PageRank of 3+ before running PPC ads. Play it safe. Check your website's PageRank here or download and install Google's toolbar. If you are using Firefox you can install the SearchStatus plugin mentioned by Mike Oyama below (more information available here).
8) Do you have any friends? Make sure your website has enough backlinks before sending any PPC traffic. Think of a backlink as a thumbs up for your website. In other words, other websites are linking to your website because they think it has something of value to offer. There are many backlink building strategies that you can use. This is beyond the scope of this thread, but you can ask questions about backlinks over at the free advertising sub-forum. You can check how many backlinks your website has using this free tool.
9) Don't engage in AdSense arbitrage! Tissa mentions this below, but I'll elaborate here. AdWords is the mirror image of AdSense. In other words, ads purchased through AdWords are displayed by AdSense (this applies to the Content Network, not the Search Network). In the past, some affiliates have found it profitable to bid on cheap keyphrases on AdWords and then direct this traffic to a website that displayed AdSense ads that would pay out more than the advertising costs. Here's an example: An advertiser could bid on a long-tail keyword like "how to avoid lung cancer" and then direct traffic to a landing page about mesothelioma and display Adsense ads on this page. The keyword mesothelioma pays out a lot of money because law firms around the country have bid this keyword up to an insane amount in the past. Obviously it didn't take Google long to catch on to this arbitrage method.
10) Avoid questionable niches. I don't want to make a blanket statement here, but it's in your best interest to avoid advertising certain niches like weight loss, nutritional supplements, Forex, business opportunities, debt consolidation, etc. Obviously anything adult related is completely out of the question. Stick to more innocuous niches like people search, running shoes, knitting and vintage accordians. If you choose to advertise the APS business opportunity you must be very careful with how you present it. The offer has to reside in the background of your content-rich, value-added website.
11) Is your website missing a page? Make sure your website has at least a privacy policy, contact page and a site map. I know a lot of people aren't comfortable with this, but posting a physical address and telephone number can only help.
12) Don't try to circumvent Google's new editorial guidelines. Don't cloak your affiliate links or use redirects. If you build a content-rich website you won't have to have worry about disguising your affiliate links
13) Know thy neighbor. One of the beauties of Internet marketing is one can get started on a shoestring. Just buy a domain name and a cheap shared web hosting plan and you're in business. However, one of the drawbacks of a shared hosting plan is you are sharing the same IP address with others. What if your neighbor is involved in a shady business? Or is an aspiring spammer? Well, first you can check out your neighbors with this free tool. Second, you can buy a dedicated IP address. HostGator sells blocks of 8 IPs for $16.00. If you buy dedicated IPs make sure you talk with someone in the tech department to verify that you're getting fresh IPs, not recycled.
Don't worry if this last point doesn't make any sense to you right now. It's not critical when you start. You'll learn over time as you build your website with unique content and you start getting free (organic) traffic from your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts that you'll want to take additional measures to protect what you've worked so hard to create.
One final note: Occasionally put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and ask yourself this simple question: "Do I find this content valuable?" What kind of 'value' are you looking for when you are searching the Internet? Apply your same standards to the content that you provide your visitors.
I hope these guidelines have been helpful. Don't worry if they left your head spinning. There is really only one thing you have to keep in mind: Content is still KING! Build content-rich websites that provide visitors value and the rest of the pieces will fall into place. You'll probably find that if you truly commit yourself to providing unique content to your visitors that you'll start getting enough free traffic that you may prefer to not even deal with the complexities of pay per click advertising.
There will still be a place for pay per click advertising for the foreseeable future, but this new paradigm shift will make it more complementary, at least with Google AdWords. You can still create thin affiliate websites and drive PPC traffic at Yahoo and Bing, but it's a smart move to get ahead of the curve before the curve catches up to you!
Alright, so how does one go about building a unique website that can easily be updated with new content? One way is by installing the WordPress platform. Folks, this why we just launched the Take HostGator Hosting to the Hilt sub-forum. The goal is to get new members building unique websites and we're going to accomplish this goal by placing a heavy emphasis on the use of WordPress. The sub-forum is under construction while we work on adding more step-by-step tutorials, but we've already posted a few tutorials to get you started. Plus you can start asking related questions and we have a very capable team in place to answer them. If anyone wants to start blogging with WordPress head over there and we'll get you setup.
-Chris
Last edited by closenno (2009-12-07 03:09:58)
