We can tell you that some powerful new information has come to light regarding how to avoid the Google Slap. Just how fresh is it? Enough that you’ll want to jot it down in your favorite spiral-bound notebook for later use.

But before we get down to the latest fight-back-against-the-slap-science, make sure to prep your head by downloading RW’s awesome one-page takeaway from last semester re: Avoiding The Google Slap. Just click the download link at the top of the page in The Source to get this meaty PDF anti-slap juggernaut.

Your one-pager includes, but is not limited to, the following tips:

*Niche site building
*Avoiding being flagged as a ‘bridge page’
*Linking to external websites
*Using dynamic keyword insertion effectively
*Self hosting .exe files and cloaking your affiliate links

These power-tweaks will provide you with a list of natural slap-proofing techniques to instantly raise the shields on your landing pages and protect your AdWords account from Google’s hard knocks.

For real-world examples on how to put these techniques into practice, watch our very own Avoiding The Google Slap video, already viewed by over 500 avid affiliate marketers.

Guaranteed kids, you’re going to want to have this wisdom in your arsenal when it comes to dodging the Google Slap bullet.

Now. Let’s move on to the new information.

Q. What’s today’s revelation, Mr. Teach?
A. Today we’re gonna talk about arbitrage.
Q. Never heard of it – What’s it all about?

Glad you asked. For those readers who don’t know, here’s how the Adwords AdSense Arbitrage system works:

Chalkboard Economics 101

An individual (or a company) buys cheap Google AdWords ads to drive search visitors to their own site where they write about topics that are likely to attract high-paying ads (e.g., health, medicine, loans, legal cases, etc.).

If a reader or search visitor clicks on this cheap Google ad to come to their site, and then leaves the site by clicking on an expensive ad, the website owner makes money on the difference, minus Google’s commission.

The minimum bid for buying a Google AdWords ad is 1 cent so anyone can experiment without spending a whole lot of money but, it doesn’t matter, because its against the rules.

Google’s Tough Stance On Arbitrage

Google’s position is and always has been that high ad quality and landing page quality are important for providing a positive user experience. It follows that Google AdWords doesn’t permit ads directing to landing pages that were specifically made to show additional ads (the nefarious practice known as “arbitrage” described above).

Furthermore, Google is extending the definition of arbitrage to include websites that are primarily occupied by display ads. In these cases, the ratio of ads to unique, non-ad content is measured to determine if a landing page violates the Google arbitrage policy. Google measures this ratio by looking at content above the fold (i.e. without scrolling).

Check Your Head For Excellence

A landing page is not considered arbitrage if all of the following conditions
are met:

1. The browser display area consists of a healthy ratio of unique and relevant content. Our guess is at least one-third. This excludes search boxes, headers, navigation links, logos, etc. Specific, well organized commercial offers (such as those found on retail sites) may count as unique and relevant content as long as they provide significant user value.

2. The browser display area used for ads cannot exceed the browser display
area used for unique and relevant content.

3. The site has user value other than just providing ads. For example,
Google provides web search, news sites provide regularly updated original
content, and other services.

The Arbitrage Litmus Test

To check that your website complies with Google’s arbitrage policy, take the following steps:

1. Open the site in a new browser.
2. Make sure you have minimal browser menus and your font is set to medium or normal.
3. Scroll to the very top of the page, as evaluation is based on what appears above the fold.
4. The site is considered compliant if the area of ads is less than or equal to the area of content.

The Consequences Of Non-Compliance

If you’re not in arbitrage compliance, you could receive a low landing page quality score, which will negatively affect your Quality Scores, cost-per-clicks, and ad positions. Lesson: It’s best to stay on top of the curve!

Learn more about landing page quality at:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113575&hl=en_AU.

You can review Google’s Landing Page and Site Policies here:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46675.

Is there a silver lining in these slap-happy times? Of course. Affiliates who learn to roll with the punches and make the necessary changes to their campaigns stand to make more money in the long run.

Watch Our New Google Slap Video For Awesome Pointers!

To help you adapt to the changing landscape, we’ve created a short video covering the basics of what the Google Slap is, the criteria that govern it, and the different strategies you can use to avoid it.

This short video is tailored for affiliates in the digital product niche, with real-world examples of what to do and what not to do with your campaigns. The main goal is to communicate that providing quality, unique content on your sites is the most effective way to stay out of Google’s doghouse and build your business for the long haul.

You can watch the full video here and now right on this page, or scroll down to read the individual segment descriptions and watch the video in 4 parts.

Sign Up Now with RevenueWire to get your one-page summary of The Google Slap video and other great marketing support materials from our Tutorial Center.

Part 1. What Is The Google Slap?
Ever wondered what exactly constitutes a Google Slap? You’ll find out in the first segment of our new Google Slap video, anchored by RevenueWire Affiliate Manager Seth Hornby. Watch It Now >>

Part 2. Tips For Your AdWords
This segment covers 3 tips for how you can meet and exceed Google AdWord Guidelines, including Relevant and Original Content, Transparency and Navigability. Watch It Now >>

Part 3. Real-World Examples
Seth takes 2 real life examples of a Driver Product Landing Page and a Driver Mini-Site that have been blacklisted on Google. You’ll learn in detail the different page elements that can result in a Google Slap. At the end, Seth shows an example of a well-designed landing page to provide you with a clear idea of how your landing pages should look. Watch It Now >>

Part 4. Brief Summary
The Google Slap is not all doom and gloom. Seth shares a few positive changes that have come out of the recent rise in number of Google Slaps, including its beneficial effect on competitive keyword bid price. Seth concludes the presentation by explaining the long term advantages of building content rich web sites as promotional tools. Watch It Now >>

You can also watch the video in 4 segments in the Playlist.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE VIDEO. IT WAS DEFINITELY FUN TO MAKE. MAKE SURE TO USE THESE TIPS AND STRATEGIES IN YOUR CAMPAIGNS!

Google is also operating under the assertion that if their search engine does not return the most relevant results, they could possibly lose both users and revenue.

They believe they could see a drop in their market share and in this competitive climate, that situation would be unacceptable. Both Bing and Yahoo! are positioning themselves with new offerings and partnerships, so the competition is now stronger than ever. Google’s solution to this competition is what is driving the new directive that we have all come to know as the “May Day Update.”

Defining The May Day Update

In the first installment we covered what the Google May Day Update is, and how it may affect you and your web sites. We provided warning signs that you can use to determine if your site has been affected and explained what Google is trying to accomplish by changing their algorithm in this way.

Overcoming The Algorithm Change

In the second installment of the May Day update articles, we explained what factors would cause your web site to lose ranking and relevance under the new Google rules. We provided some ways to help overcome the initial ill-effects and explained how effective back linking could help your web site. The provided examples illustrated what could possibly be done to get the ranking and traffic returned.

Improving Website Quality and Relevance

In the next installment, we demonstrated how to improve our web sites to catch the desired attention and ranking from Google.  We focused on website quality and relevance; two factors that are important to you in the post-Mayday update world. We applied effective strategies and provided some examples to illustrate how they are implemented to our benefit. Our clients not only saw traffic return but they even have seen traffic gains by following this advice.

Internal and External Link Building

Finally, we displayed some effective methods to improve our web site’s relevance through targeted and carefully executed internal and external linking strategies. We showed you how to reduce the link jumps, move products closer to the home page, and even encourage organic visitors. Changes of this nature will render your web site “algorithm proof” and even improve your end user’s experience. This will strengthen the relationship with customers and separate your legitimate web site from the fraudulent ones.

Cultivating Top-Notch Content

To overcome and even thrive under the new algorithm, we have shown how to develop content that is of value to your web site visitors, and explained how to focus particularly on deeper pages within your web site and specifically your product pages.

The content on these pages should always appear to be “fresh” and updated on a regular basis, so we explained how to keep your web site update labor minimized by making the best use of user generated content.  Keep in mind that good quality pages will be rewarded by better rankings in Google in addition to increased rankings for many “long tail” phrases. We described how this strategy will naturally develop some of the back linking we are all striving to create.

Fortunately, Metamend’s clients have seen no real negative affects as they have been following our recommendations for developing and improving their site for the search engine algorithm change.

In some of the more properly executed strategies, some clients have actually seen an increase in traffic compared to their competition, which have lost rankings during the May Day update. Google has given these unprepared competitors a low ranking for not accommodating the new requirements; many are still using the old systems like content farms and blog scrapers, to no avail. While these methods have had a good run, they are less effective now, especially since the May Day update.

Google’s attempt at improving the quality of their search results requires webmasters to also improve the quality of their websites. This requires webmasters to put in time and effort to improve their websites in order to position themselves for relevant keywords and to drive traffic. Many web site owners will now find difficulty in devoting these resources to achieve their goals and as a result, the top ranking positions will be held by those who are seen as providing fresh content on a regular basis. This does not have to be as labor intensive as sounds, as we demonstrated.

By following Google’s guidelines and developing a web site that provides value to the web site visitors, we will ensure that our own web sites consistently rank for keywords and develop the desired authority over time. Then by applying our strategies consistently, we can insure that these valuable sites are never negatively affected by any sort of search engine algorithm update.

To briefly summarize, we have demonstrated what the Google May Day update is, how to determine if your web site has been affected, and what you can do about it specifically with examples and strategies.

You are not alone in this issue, and we hope this article series has been helpful and informative. Remember that you have the ability to not only overcome the effects of Google’s algorithm change, but to actually improve your site’s rank and positioning with a little effort and some dedicated strategy.

Link Building Is Where It’s At

As we all know, search engines crawl your web site looking not just at content, but also at the number and types of web sites that are linking to your web site. The updated algorithms used in these search engines, like Google for example, are continually making determinations on the quality of your linking. Higher quality back linking will yield a much better result than a back link determined to be of lesser quality or no quality at all by the search engine’s algorithm.

Under current search engine algorithm rules, this becomes a question more of quality than quantity in the post- Google-May-Day-Update world. Given this new importance of properly formed links, let’s look at what characteristics make a link a higher quality back link.

What Makes A Link High-Quality?

Higher quality back links possess one or more of your web site’s keywords, especially somewhere in the anchor text. Back links with keywords located in the anchor text are generally viewed more favorably by search engines than back links without keywords in the anchor text. This is because it appears that the links are coming from sites with related information when the keywords are found within the anchor text. Therefore, the link appears to possess higher relevance to search engines like Google. Websites that appear to have a multitude of irrelevant incoming links will not be viewed as important by the search engine as would a handful of properly formed and relevant back links and keywords.

There are some beneficial strategies and techniques that we can use, and for clarity we will separate them into two categories: 1) Internal linking, and 2) Back linking.

1. Internal Linking Strategy

For internal linking strategy, we are looking to reduce the amount of “link jumps” which have to be followed to find affiliate product pages. These link jumps not only confuse the search engines, but they can confuse and turn off the customer as well. Consider the idea that wherever possible, you should link the pages and / or products that you wish to promote closer to the relevant homepage, or possibly closer to the featured products on the homepage. There are tangible marketing benefits to this strategy beyond the search engine ranking. The end user experience will be better and this can also encourage return visitors to your site organically.

In addition, keep in mind that it’s beneficial to ensure these links go to pages that have been updated with the type of quality content we previously mentioned. It pays to be thorough and consistent in this step. Again, the end user experience will be improved by taking these important measures.

When properly formed, optimized pages and links have the benefit of passing on your desirable page rank directly to your product pages, by featuring links to those products from the very same valuable pages. This is especially true of your pages with a high or “higher” Google page rank.

This will help increase the ranking for your product pages while simultaneously increasing your long tail traffic. This is especially true if the content requirements are correctly applied as we previously described.

2. Back Linking Strategy

Now that we have our internal links working correctly, we will look at back linking, and how to make this crucial step as beneficial as possible to your web site.

The goal here is to see continued increases in back links to your deep pages or the properly formed product pages. Then, we will want to make sure to keep the applicable content relevant and valuable. When something in your business changes, then make sure to update your content. While no one can update their sites on the fly all of the time, regular updates to what you have will keep your site relevant. This step alone, on pages of this nature, will tend to attract links over time.

Let’s keep in mind that back linking should be an ongoing, continual process, as older links will decrease in value over time and fresh, relevant content will still draw the desired attention. For example, if your product offering is static, there is no reason that your descriptions and photos need to be that way. By changing the descriptions periodically and adjusting photos and comments, you can generate a level of freshness that will get noticed by the search engine.

In fact, by encouraging site visitors to leave comments or product reviews, the customer will actually do much of this work for you. Regular visitors leaving commentary can generate the level of freshness we require. We need to make our changes while keeping in mind that relevance is key for back links, not page rank as you might think. In fact relevance, not page rank, should be the deciding factor you use when acquiring links. The end goal after all is to get found by both the search engines and your customers.

One way to insure that you’re forming the back links properly is to consider each web page as a separate entity. Develop your links with that in mind and work carefully on a per page basis. This will keep the content relevant as your focus will be only the page at hand. These properly formed links will give you the traffic that you are looking for, and it will get the customers who are looking for you to their desired destination.

We now have some beneficial tools in our arsenal to combat the effects of future algorithm changes, like Google’s May Day update. By modifying our collective focus to enhance our internal linking and back linking, and changing our view of what is important from page rank to relevant content instead, we are prepared to keep our web sites highly searchable and, somewhat by default, the rankings will follow.

In the next and final article in this series, we will demonstrate how to tie all of this advice together to give you the necessary tools to properly adjust and overcome this May Day algorithm update and plan for any future updates.

The basic elements around this strategy to overcome the ill effects of the algorithm change are quality of data, freshness of your content, and the amount of “related” content that appears on your web site or web sites.

Build For Quality, Not Mediocrity

First, the quality of the data and content is a high priority on Google’s radar now, so you need to make sure you keep our content relevant. Be sure to consider in advance what you’re putting on your site and what the potential value to web site visitors will be.

The most effective technique here will be to use unique, original, and valuable content designed with the targeted visitors in mind. This will be of particular benefit to you, on your product or your affiliate pages, as these are currently the pages most scrutinized by Google.

Make sure that the content is properly formed, both grammatically and in context, and be sure to make use of a spellchecker as a final step. This one simple step could mean the difference between being a victim of the May Day update or benefiting from it.

The spellchecker tool is part of most software packages, OEM operating systems and even most e-mail clients and it’s almost always free.  Consider that a web site full of errors and incoherent content can give the user the sense that your site is fraudulent, and even possibly illegitimate.  This is what Google is trying to prevent with the algorithm change, and you could become an accidental victim simply by not proofreading your own content before publishing.

Also, keep in mind that any content on your web site that is not present on other competitor’s sites will give you an edge both in the search engines and for visitors to your site. Try to add content such as regular product reviews to your product pages, and other user generated content, which will bring the user further into the experience and keep them coming back for more.

Keeping fresh content of this nature on your web site will also entice the search engines to visit much more often. Content like this is most valuable to your visitors and ensures your site will remain relevant in the future.

Here are some tips to keep your site relevant:

1. Know Your Market And Your Competition
If you’re the “small fish” or even the “same-size fish” in the pond that’s “your niche”, then you need to do something to increase your search engine presence. If your site has relatively few pages and you’re a competitor in a somewhat competitive niche, then the obvious solution will be to increase the number of pages for your targeted phrases.  For example, if you’re selling engine parts and you have a page for Chevrolet parts and a page for Ford parts, and that is all for now, then you’ll have a fairly small footprint online.

To deepen your search footprint, if you could add extra site pages for Chevrolet v8 parts, Chevrolet v6 parts, Ford v8 parts and Ford v6 parts, you would see the resulting change in ranking and volume of traffic. You have the same parts as before, but you’ve made the searching experience more relevant and easier for visitors and the search engines to find.

By using the same keywords and properly forming the pages, you have essentially doubled the size of your online footprint. This change will get Google’s algorithm’s attention, and get you the traffic you’re looking for, and enhance the user experience all at the same time.

2. Develop Content That Is Focused On a Specific Subject
Make sure to write this content with a higher level of granular detail. Develop your “long tail” subjects a bit more, and this modification will contribute to increasing your page depth as well. Changes like these will make a much bigger target out of your site for the search engine to hit.

3. Differentiate Yourself From MFA and / or “Thin Affiliate” Sites
You can easily accomplish this feat by providing contact information for your visitors to use, and making sure you have a privacy policy in place.

Having these “Privacy” and “Contact Us” pages as separate and unique entities will also greatly assist your search engine efforts and increase your searchable online presence.  Any addition that demonstrates to Google and to visitors to your site that you’re here to stay, and not fraudulent, will increase your impact on the search engine ranking as well.

The overall goal is to show both visitors and search engines that your web site is truly legitimate and is “in it for the long haul.” Keeping live email contacts, working phone numbers, actual physical addresses and any permanent items will prove that your site is not a scam.

We need to keep in mind that Google has stated that the May Day changes were made in an effort to keep content fresh and relevant. If you follow the suggestions made here, you should be able to keep your relevance and improve the overall user experience in your favor.

Next week we will talk about linking and how with some strategy and careful implementation, we can recover or boost our page relevance. Also, by taking a few proactive steps, we can make it possible to enjoy some traffic increases and even encourage return visitors.

This update is part and parcel of Google’s “caffeine” modification, which returns data that’s 50% fresher than what was yielded in past searches. This increase in the volume of fresh data rendered is now made possible by Google’s switch to processing data in “pieces” rather than in “layers”, which was standard practice prior to the update.

Schizophrenic Algorithms

It might not come as much of a shock, but each year Google changes its algorithm anywhere between 350 and 500 times. What often happens as a result of these changes is that people who get too focused on exact ranking factors see their site drop when Google releases these algorithmic tweaks.

Minor Quakes From The May Day Update

On the face of it, the May Day modification is simply a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing one. That said, it has still had its effects on some websites. For some it has resulted in a decrease in traffic volume, even though their pages are still getting indexed. After the update the pages seem to not rank as high as they did before, and this is where the stress comes from.

Google’s changes seem to be primarily affecting “long-tail” traffic stemming from the longer search terms that more sophisticated searchers use. When you calculate the net effect of those searchers per site, it adds up fairly quickly, given that long-tail searches convert at a higher rate.

The algorithm change also seems to be affecting very large sites with “item” pages, such as e-commerce sites. Pages of this nature usually don’t have many inbound links, and the links they do have are usually buried within the site. Chances are also very high that these types of sites don’t have substantial amounts of unique content.

The Importance Of Unique Product Descriptions

An important observation to make is that it’s beneficial to keep unique product descriptions for anything you’re selling on your site. To date, the sites that only use a manufacturer’s generic product copy could suffer the most from the May Day update, experiencing a heavy loss in direct traffic to their product pages.

Provide The Freshest Content Yet

Products aside, having relevant content that addresses the search terms that you’re trying to rank for is always a good idea, and the main search keyword is just the start; Google looks for synonyms, uniqueness and strength of the linking profile.
***Looking for original web content? Check out our friends at www.constant-content.com

What Is Google Trying To Achieve with This Update?

The goal of the May Day update is to universally improve search quality and user experience. Google has openly stated its intent to ensure when you search for something, you’re provided with the highest quality content on a per search basis. Basically Google trying to make search more helpful and weed out any content duplication, as well as minimizing the impact of what it considers to be lower quality websites.

What Types Of Websites Are Being Affected By This Update?

The hardest hit by the Google Algorithm change are auto-generated pages and content farms. As already mentioned, the May Day update is basically engineered to improve search quality.

This is a good reminder for affiliates that you should always be providing the highest quality content for your consumers. A recommended tactic is to provide content not available anywhere else, and ensure that it’s helpful; also,  avoid scraped, generic and low quality content whenever you can.

How Can You Determine If Your Site Is Affected By This Update?

The best way is to check on your own around the time between April 28th-May 3rd. This is when a lot of sites notice a loss of 5-15% of their normal long-tail traffic. Furthermore, if you check your search referral traffic between April 28th and May 3rd you may have seen a drop in these statistics as well.

Check to see if the change is in the number of referrals, or the number of pages getting traffic. A drop in traffic to your bigger terms probably is not a May Day effect, but drops in search referrals could be. Also, if your index or crawl stats changed suddenly, this could indicate you were hit by the update.

To be certain, check any links to your child pages across the site; these pages may have suffered a May Day relevance drop. If you don’t have unique content, even on your less important pages, you may have seen a dip.

In part two of this five part series we will cover in more detail what factors cause the site to be affected, and in subsequent articles we will discuss what improvements can be made and what you can do to minimize the impact of this algorithm change.

The May Day Update Part 2
The May Day Update Part 3

***This article is the first in a five part series brought to you by our partners at Metamend, the Search Marketing Experts. Since 1998 Metamend has been widely recognized as one of the leading search engine optimization firms in the industry. Providing advanced organic search and Internet marketing searches to clients in over 60 countries, Metamend works to bring pre-qualified visitors to their clients’ websites and to convert those visitors into long-term commercial relationships. Metamend’s search and Internet marketing methods follow the best practices outlined by the major search engines, and its staff maintain strong personal relationships with others at all levels of the search marketing industry.

The EU Court of Justice (Europe’s highest legal authority) ruled that companies using competitors’ names as Internet advertising keywords are not infringing European trademark laws. It further allowed that customers of Google’s paid-for Adwords service may choose whichever words they want, within reason, without infringing trademark law.

You can read more details about the case and its effects here:

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=B1FB02FD-1A64-67EA-E4153A0926DAC5EF

A similar ruling was also recently handed down in a Canadian BC (British Columbia) Court:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5104/135/

The decision means the Courts are taking a more laissez-faire approach to the issue, allowing advertisers to duke it out in the PCC world, but ultimately putting the onus on consumers to an independent and informed choice about the ads they click on and the products they buy online.

What do you think about the ruling? Drop a comment and let us know!

If You Build For Quality, The Conversions Will Come.

This is probably the biggest topic in affiliate marketing today. Affiliates have to change the way they think about their business. Gone are the days where you could tack up a flimsy download button-crazy landing page stuffed with slimmer than trim content, and still make bang for your buck.

Nowadays, the game has changed. The role of the landing page has morphed. It’s become the final step in a much larger process watched over carefully by Google’s quality administrators, instead of the be-all and end-all of the online sales funnel that it used to be. The landing page is now just one critical component in a much larger structure that’s driven by the need to provide consumers real value.

Affiliate marketing’s new gold standard involves building out rich, relevant content sites around highly-targeted landing pages that are designed for the sole purpose of closing the sale. The new industry buzzword is “pre-sell”, rather than “hard-sell”. Today’ s affiliate has to do the legwork. They have to run as much value-selling up front through their site, so that when the consumer gets to the landing page they’ve already inspired them with an unmistakable commitment to the highest standard of customer service.

Build Topic-Related Sites With Authentic Content.

The art of the pre-sell is about loading up the front end of your sales funnel with original, useful content and trust building elements that aren’t directly related to the product you’re selling. The content you offer is directly related to the larger problem or need your customer has, and the product becomes the natural solution to that problem rather than the focus of your site. In other words the product becomes an adjunct or aside to the primary goal, which is to provide the consumer with the best solution, i.e., the perfect answer to their search query.<

Creating a site with a Home Page, Features Page, Contact Info, Testimonials, and an authentic Blog is necessary and best way to tackle this pre-sell method. It's also the key to staying alive in the affiliate game. The content on this type of site has to have true value. It has to be relevant to the solution your product provides, and give the customer precisely what they're looking for when they go from one of your PPC ads to your site or product landing page.

Say No To Black Hat.

Shady landing pages don’t last as long as they used to. The industry has definitely tightened its chops. And since Quality Score doesn’t allow you to start fresh with every new campaign or new content type – any bad history you’ve made follows you to your next destination. Having bad history also means you’ll pay a positioning and cost-per-click penalty foe stepping outside the lines.

So needless to say it literally pays to do it right from the very start. If your paid search advertising is opportunistic and inconsistent, or attempts to mislead or deceive users, you’re business will suffer in the end.

Build Your AdWords Accounts Sequentially.

When starting a brand new account, you should build sequentially. First add keywords and ad groups with a tight and narrow focus to your landing pages and give them enough time to earn a good Quality Score (6 at least) while giving the account some history of good performance.

It’s speculative to suggest the ‘right’ size or period of time, but a few weeks with keywords numbering in the dozens or low hundreds seems to work. Equally important is amassing click histories in the hundreds or even thousands – enough data for Google to truly evaluate your performance.

Conserve Your Top Performing URLs.

This one might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but after a little explaining you’ll see why it makes sense. While the precise impact of the historical CTR of a target URL is unknown, it makes sense that Google would give you the benefit of the doubt with any URL that produces consistently strong Quality results.

With this point in mind, you might want to lean on the conservative side with how you use those ‘big ticket’ target URLs. It’s a bit like what a coach goes through in sports when he has to decide how many minutes his star players should play. He doesn’t want to burn out his franchise go-to-guys before they get a chance to win the game, but at the same time he wants his best players on the floor as much as possible to give his team the greatest chance of winning. It’s a balancing act – and the same goes for your PPC campaigns.

Try to give your big URLs a rest in situations where you’re working with unknown performance variables, such as new PPC ads. Google tends to give less leeway with new niches and keywords i your text ads than with historically proven ads, so you don’t want any potentially poor performing campaigns hurting your QS on a landing page that is a proven winner. Try to use your best performing URLs as an anchor for your continued success.

What do you think about the way affiliate marketing is changing? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment and let’s get the discussion rolling!