Affiliate Marketing and the Recent Google Slap
Posted on : 11-02-2010 | By : Eric Haaranen | In : Affiliate programs, Blogging for profit, Freelance writer, Squidoo lenses, Work from home
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If you\’re using pay per click marketing and if you\’ve been doing so for any length of time you know that Google Adwords is really, the only game in town if you want fast, significant traffic. You\’ll also know that setting up a Google campaign is quite complicated due to the fact that Google has a number of rules that you\’re supposed to play by but they don\’t really make those rules obvious anywhere. As a result it is a challenging game to play.
Google also has a bit of a history for changing the rules of the game without any heads-up to their advertisers. This is often called the Google Slap. Back in the day you could just build a simple lead capture page and drive traffic to it using Adwords. Not anymore. Now Google wants to see some significant content on those sites so those site provide \”value\” to their visitors. This makes things especially tough for affiliate marketers.
It seems that Google has taken out the ruler and is slapping affiliates again. This time the targets are review-type affiliate sites. It is common practice for a site that is promoting an affiliate offer to write a review about the product they are promoting and then lead the visitor on to (hopefully) buy the product through what we call an affiliate link. This is simply a code that tells the vendor where the sale came from so he or she knows where to send the commission.
That was the deal but recently Google decided that they no longer like such sites. Actually to be more accurate they no longer like advertisers that use Adwords to drive traffic to landing pages or sites promoting affiliate products. It seems a strange decision by Google when one considers that most of the sales on the web are driven by affiliates and Google itself owns an affiliate network.
Nonetheless, what is done is done. What affiliate marketers must ask themselves now is how they can adapt to this new environment.
I can\’t speak for everyone but what I\’m doing seems to be working very well. To discover what that is please visit the link below.
About the Author. Eric Haaranen is the author of Nice People Can Sell and the owner of ModernSalesProspecting.com. His latest project involves building a community to review internet marketing tools and helping website owners find the best solutions for their businesses. You can learn more about Eric\’s seo services by visiting his blog.



