Google's Slap in the Face for Small Marketers

Unless you've been hibernating in a corner somewhere, then you can't have failed to hear the furore that recent changes to some of Google's rules have created. The advertising community are beginning to call this the 'Google Slap' as it appears that Google have effectively delivered a 'slap in the face' to a large number of their advertising customers.

Just in case you've been hibernating (or, more likely you've been on vacation somewhere) here's a recap on Google's new rules:

What they've done is to come up with Quality Score that Google defines as: 'A value placed on an individual domain that reflects the quality of the content contained within it.'. Which is nice and vague. But it boils down to the fact that if Google decides that your site doesn't contain sufficient 'useful' content then your site will be penalized within the search engine.

Take, as an example, a very common scenario: an internet marketer is running an AdWords campaign that targets a single page which contains little more than a tiny amount of text and an opt-in form then this site will undoubtedly be penalized under Google's new rules. Indeed all sites that are little more than just one page sales letters, squeeze pages, pure AdSense sites or affiliate sites will be hit by this rule. Which basically covers everything that traditional affiliate and product marketers use to sell their wares.

At the moment it looks as if this penalty will both reduce the ranking of your site whilst increasing the per-clik cost of and AdSense advertisement targeting your pages.

Even worse is that these penalties, as described in Google's statement are levied at the domain level. This could potentially mean that you could have some wonderful pages with literally loads of useful contnet on them, but if Google has decided that the remainder of your website is complete crapola then your entire domain will be affected!

It also seems that Google is also checking varous other things such as:
— the age of your domain (how long your site has been on-line)
— the number of pages from your site that Google has indexed
— whether or not your have a page on your site stating your privacy policy
— whether you have a 'contact' or 'about me' page on your site.

Undoubtedly Google is doing this to try and combat 'spam sites' ie sites that spring up overnight and contain nothing but auto-generated pages full of links, and/or appear to be built simply to display Google Adsense advertisements without really providing quality content. However, as seems the norm for 'King Google' at the moment (see my Has Google lost the plot 1 and Has Google lost the plot 2 articles for more) they've created an essentially arbitary set of rules that will nds up penalizing new businesses who have brand new domain names and who simply haven't had enough time to fill their site up with content as well as the 'spammers' (but this, again, seems to be part of Google's current strategy).

Given that this represents the new reality, what do you need to do to overcome this latest google hurdle?

There are a few work arounds for the 'Google Slap' (though as with any workaround your mileage may vary and they're not guranteed to offer complete protection. Especially as we effectvely have a rapidly-moving target here. However, there are things that you can do to improve your overall quality score.

Once you've looked through the list it will come as no surprise that many of the points detailed here are fairly standard SEO procedures and are detailed more thoroughly in my eBook The Secret to Maximizing your Web Traffic.

1. Install a Blog on your Domain

A blog is an excellent way of providing content for your domain. If you don't have one then set it up now and start posting to it. It's also important that your blog is hosted on your domain and that you link to it from your main sitemap.

If your site is new then you should know that adding a blog to it will darmatically increase your site's standing (and the number of pages indexed from it) in Google's eyes.

If you have affiliate landing pages that are basically isolated from the remainder of your domain (to keep visitors there) than at least link your blog to these pages and these pages to your blog as this will improve the amount of content visible from them.

1. Get More Incoming Links

There's no getting away from this one: the more In-Bound Links (IBLs) you have then the higher the ranking of your site and the better your ranking in Google's eyes.

But be careful. Don't get involved with link 'farms' but do submit your links to link sites. You can also write articles and press releases (but make sure to add your site's links to them).

Also find sites with similar content/user profiles to yours and ask them if they're willing to exchange links with you (most will be happy to).

3. Make sure you add a 'Privacy Policy' & 'Contact Us'

This one is a direct response to Google's new rules: The 'contact us' page is easy enough. Just create a page with your name, e-mail contact and if appropriate your telephone number, business name and contact address.

Now create a 'Privacy Policy' page. This is a little trickier to produce. You could simply do a search for 'privacy policy', look at the kinds of variations avaialble and then code a variant up for your own use.

Alternativey you could add a 'P3P' which is a new web standard that allows websites to declare privacy policies regarding things like the use of cookies and the storage of e-mail addresses. For a more detailed exposition of this have a look at wikipedia's entry on P3P.

4. Build a Site Map

This is pretty-much a no-brainer. Search engines love site maps and if you use an automated sitemap generator (such as google's sitemaps genrator you even get a breakdown of any problems in your site. Just make sure that your sitemap also lists your contact and privacy policy pages.

5. Add Links to any Affiliate Landing Pages

This is the biggest departure from marketing norms. Previously you would not have considered adding a link to anywhere from your affiliate landing pages. But, in this brave new world of Google rules you must at the very least make certain that your landing pages link to your privacy policy and contact pages. It is also probably a good idea to link your landing pages to your blog (and vice versa) as this will provide real contnet to associate with your pages.

6. Add More Content!

Again this is a no-brainer. Google's touchstones for a site's worth are definitely becoming the overall content of a site and the number of in-bound links it has. As a result you should add as much content as you can to a domain.

You could do this with eZine-type articles but if you do so at least make certain that you add your own commentary around the article otherwise you may receive the dreated 'duplicate content' penalty. Even a three or four-hundred word review on an affiliate product can be enough to provide you with 'real' content.


Truthfully, however, the writing has been on the wall for some time as regards 'thin' affiliate-focussed websites with little or no true content and it's one of the reasons that I decided to build my own website on the large-scale model, adding content first and then focussing on marketing and income strategies. It undoubtedly lead to a lowering of my opt-in conversions (as visitors could move elewhere in my site) but it may just turn-out to be a good long-term strategy.