Jul 23, 2009 Posted in Marketing Ideas

Google Taking Out the Ruler and Spanking Affiliates – Again.

Anyone doing pay per click marketing for any length of time knows that Google Adwords is the main playing field if you want to get serious traffic quickly. You would also know that setting up Adwords campaigns is complicated and often frustrating due to the fact that Google is less than forth-coming with all of the rules you’re supposed to follow if you want to compete in their auction-like pay per click advertising program.

You will also know that Google has a history of ‘slapping’ their customers for doing anything that Google considers bad. Going way back you could just put up a lead capture page and drive traffic to it through PPC. But then Google stepped in and said, “Nope, you also have to have some significant content for your visitors to see”. This drove some businesses – especially affiliates – out of business overnight.

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’re 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.

In any event, it seems that this week Google has changed their algorythms again and this time they’re looking for Adwords advertisers that are driving traffic to these affiliate review pages – or any type of landing page obviously promoting affiliate products. It seems a strange tactic by Google considering that affiliate marketing is such a huge part of online marketing and also that Google itself runs its own affiliate network.

But what is done is done. The question now becomes, “What can affiliates do about it?”

Well, if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you know what I’m going to say next. Even affiliate marketers have to seize control of the sales process. You need to build and own the relationship with your visitors so that they trust your opinion when making purchasing decisions. You do this by offering honest reviews of products that you use yourself.

At the same time, you need to build a list of these people so that you can proactively reach out to them through email whenever you want to. Of course, you can include your affiliate links in these emails and Google will never be able to stop you from doing this. Regardless of the most recent Google moves this is something you really should be doing anyway.

Provide good content, build trust, stay in touch and then get paid. That is the path to affiliate success.