Almost every active affiliate now knows about the Google Slap: if Google finds or determines that the page that potential customers visit when they click on the ad is not related, is poor in quality, or even loads too slowly, they may take punitive action in the form of a Google Slap. Basically, the Google Slap accomplishes several things at once. First, it drives up the price of your pay per click amount, sometimes asking as much as $10USD per click, which most small vendors cannot afford to pay. Second, they may reduce your page ranking (PR), which will automatically mean you have to pay more to have your ads featured through AdWords.  Or worst off, they’ll completely deny your page from listing, just ask Logan Thompson.

There was a lot of affiliate embitterment toward Google after their arbitrary slap, which is naturally justified given the cold and capricious manner in which Google shut down accounts.  So, for awhile now most affiliates left google in totality and focused on other traffic sources.  This was an important move because it’s not good to put all of your eggs in one basket.   At the end of the day this is a temporary move since Google does in fact own 65.1% of all internet traffic, with Yahoo at a distant #2 at 13.5%.

Here is our suggestions to create acceptable affiliate landing pages for Google that will convert:

1.  Build Quality Sites: The days of single page landing sites on Google are over. Focus on giving the customer a quality experience on your site. Give them what the merchant doesn’t give them. Create unique content that isn’t there just to take up space, but to satisfy your potential customer.  IE, HomeWhiteningCare.org, which incidentally is ranked #1 in the search engines.  This is a content rich site that adds value to consumers.  By adding value to consumers through helpful information, consumers in return trust the messages of the website.

2.  Create Highly Targeted Campaigns:  Focus on certain keywords and build your entire campaign around them.  If you are selling a teeth whitener, build out a page with  “Teeth Whitener” in the domain name.

3.  Content Is King: Write original content.  If you’re not an expert on the subject, pay professionals in the industry to draft up articles, do not pay content writers.  IE if you have a teeth whitener site, pay a dentist to do an article on your blog.  Consumers will see this and trust your recommendations to buy even more.  Also, make sure that there are articles included that are not related to the product that you’re trying to sell, otherwise risk getting caught by the ultimate spam blocker – human beings.

Once you get your new landing page approved we suggest you checkout the Google content network.  Right now there are several HC publishers pushing a hundred+ leads a day from there.  Google is and will always be one of the best traffic sources for affiliate marketers.  The key is that we’ll have to adjust to change.