“Adwords Primer for Affiliate Marketers” (V3) Free!

I just released the new version of my Adwords Primer guide that you can now get just signing up to my Blaster’s Ezine. So not only do you get my 50 Adwords Tips guide, but now you get a 60+ Page guide to help you get started, step by step, with Adwords!

Learn more here >> Blaster’s Ezine and Free Adwords Training Guides

It also includes a new chapter on how to stay on the good side of Google. Learn how not to get suspended or banned and what I have done to stay in their good graces.

-Matt Levenhagen

Google Adwords: Suspensions & Warnings.. a Necessary Evil

I hate nothing more than to see advertisers get hurt. Having 100s of members with Adwords accounts, I’m in a unique position to see how it really affects the small, medium to large advertisers. Because we have all of them in the Blast Membership..

And I’ve seen this play out many times over the years. I’ve been running this membership since the end of 2005.

I’ve always teached my members to focus on Quality. It’s hard-wired into my training. Quality Merchants.. and building Quality Campaigns overall. But still, some fall into the trap of testing merchants or strategies that in the end hurt them.

Not always intentionally. Sometimes it’s just a novice or beginner mistake; but it happens to a ’small’ percentage. A majority of members are just fine after the changes I’ll talk about next here.. but a small percentage have been hurt and will need to shift their focus, improve their business and/or focus more on other PPC Engines (Yahoo, MSN).

This last week Google made another major sweeping move to clean up their SERPs. And it’s not been pretty for those that use specific strategies, have certain account histories or have a record of poor quality landing pages (either their own or the merchants they are promoting).

And it’s not just Affiliates; merchants have been hit this last week as well. If you hear or read that Google hates affiliates, that’s a myth. They don’t. They don’t even hate affiliates that send traffic direct to merchant (that’s not inherently a bad thing.. that’s just someone driving traffic for a merchant that’s ok with that).

They hate what a percentage of affiliates do to make money.. their landing pages, their complete lack of focus on Quality.. thin affiliates sites and strategies. Redundant, useless or unnecessary content prior to sending traffic to the merchant.

I’m just going to basically re-post something I posted in my private forum here in the Blast Membership.. you can imagine we have a lengthy thread on this. I couldn’t reword or say this better.

It’s always been this way though.. it’s not that they don’t give a **** about their ‘advertisers’. After doing Search Marketing for 6+ years, this is how I see their philosophy.

Improve the SERPs and they will keep coming and their users will keep growing. Make that the #1 priority. Advertisers will get hurt.. but many more will benefit. It’s the same way with Organic Search.

You don’t actually think if you focus on Free traffic you’ll be safe from algo changes do you?

They’ve had this policy for years and that’s why they are still a billion dollar company and crush their competitors!

See all the people saying it’s the end of Google or I’m never advertising with them ever again in the public forums (and here I guess..)? They say, there’s always yahoo and msn?

That’s a broken record.. I can’t count how many times in the past that’s been said by those in public forums because of major changes, shifts in the algo or quality score. Yet Google is stronger than ever and their user base is as devoted.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but the reality is, the advertiser benefits from their focus on the user. That’s why we have so much traffic to tap into with Google. That’s why those of us that do stick in there and figure it out do so well.

It’s fact: The End User IS more important than us.. and we should appreciate that because that translates to the majority of us making more money.

If they just let advertisers do whatever they wanted, in the end their competition would exploit that.. or they would loose their base of users.

They are in the business of creating the best user experience and making search pure and the best it can be so they and we make more money.

People give Google a hard time for saying they ‘Do No Evil’; that it’s a total lie.. For some reason they think that has anything to do with changing their algo and QS to benefit the user which of course will hurt some advertisers along the way.

Understand the above is just my opinion based on my observations and having been a Search Marketer for 6+ years and an Adwords Advertiser since early 2004… and having coached a whole lot of people in the last 4 years.

In 6 months, a year.. Google will still be on top and there will be still advertisers making a lot of money; including affiliates..

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BUT.. I WILL LEAVE YOU WITH THIS.

You’ve heard the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

There are 3 things you can do right now to secure your profits and business.

#1

As Blasters, we aren’t limited to just Google. Many of our members do heavy PPC advertising with Yahoo and some with MSN; I have campaigns in both engines as well. That’s smart.. taking your profitable campaigns and testing them there or focusing Blasting (launching campaigns) at those engines (including things you know Google doesn’t like).

#2

Also, personally, I consider myself a Search Marketer. Part of that is I did SEO and focused on free, organic traffic long before I did PPC; and still do. So it’s bred into me. But it’s not difficult to expand your piece of the pie by expanding profitable PPC campaigns into the realm of Organic Search.

#3

Use better strategies with Google and your other PPC Engines.. like list building or developing Authority Sites and Networks. Set yourself apart.. model the affiliates that are successful and improve on what they are doing. Bring Value and Quality to the table; give people a reason to love your site or to find it useful.

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So these are very concrete and smart things you can do to protect yourself.

The reason I stand today (along with many of my friends and members) while I’ve seen many, many advertisers lose everything and give up, is because I live this approach. I’m not dependent on one traffic source or even one niche.

Some things to think about.

-Matt Levenhagen

At Some Point Can We Stop Calling These *Slaps*?

SEOs call these what?

Google Algorithm Update?

You do all realize that’s what this is.. you don’t hear SEOs saying they’ve been slapped do you?

Please dump the reference.. really! Slapped? Isn’t it time the Adwords community matured and started calling it the Adwords Algorithm Update?

Or let’s see..

Quality Score Update? Hmmm.. that makes sense.
QS Update? Short and Sweet

How about…

My Quarterly Dose of Quality Adjustments?

-Matt Levenhagen

P.S. I fought calling these slaps from day one, but I started saying it too – your subjected to something for so long it’s bound to happen.. I’m guilty, but maybe I can be the catalyst for change too.

P.S.S. This post is meant as a joke.. you can call it whatever you want and I’ll probably call it a slap too again.. but I’m just saying.