I thought I’d survived my recent Google AdWords banning quite well but after having a look at how my sites are ranking in Google using the Advanced Web Rankings tool I was a little surprised to see that a sizeable percentage of my sites had dropped right out of the Google Search Results Pages (SERPS) for some of their keywords.

My main sites don’t seem to be affected (yet), at least not for their main keywords, but some of my less profitable sites have either dropped right down or fallen off the radar completely.

There are a few reasons I can guess at that might have caused this:

• If Google thinks my sites aren’t good enough for AdWords then they aren’t good enough for the organic search so has penalised my sites there too.
  Likely-hood: probable but the sites that have dropped aren’t all sites I was promoting with AdWords although they are on the same shared hosting package.
• I’ve been buying a lot of forum profile back links and blog commenting back links lately.  
  Likely-hood: again quite likely as these links are pretty weak in terms of quality and most of the sites I got them for had no links before hand and now suddenly have 100 links – although most don’t seem to be indexed.
• I’ve only recently started monitoring my sites in the SERPS since getting the ranking tool.  With the tool I can check how my sites are ranking for lots of keywords and get updates every day.  Perhaps beforehand my sites were jumping around a lot and I never noticed.
• Likely-hood: not too high but fingers crossed this is the reason and it was going on all along.

So how are you sites doing?  Has there been a Google update?

Lets hope it doesn’t spread to my more profitable sites!

Big Drops in the SERPS for my Sites is a post from: How I Got Rich

The Google AdWords people have been in touch about some of the sites I am promoting with their service and we were in discussion about how I could improve them to make them less like affiliate sites. I gave it a try but short of taking all my affiliate links off the sties I was unable to meet their demands.

I just logged into AdWords after a weekend away and none of my ads have received any impression since half way through October 7. I’ve not had an email or any notification inside AdWords but I am guessing my account has been stopped.

Its a shame but I was relying too much on AdWords and hopefully this will allow me to keep my outgoings down a bit as I was spending about £500 a month with them.

AdWords Ban is a post from: How I Got Rich

I got an email from lpq-support@google.com the other day giving me a final warning for violating the AdWords policies. Despite it being my first warning I was quite alarmed. Although most of my traffic comes from SEO a fair amount of my sales for big ticket items come via AdWords ads so if I stopped the ads I’d probably lose out on a fair chunk of my earnings.

Only a few of my sites were listed as offending Google but they looked like most of my others sites which I am promoting through AdWords.

The email told me not to delete or pause the ads to those sites but to change the sites to meet their guidelines and then resubmit them for their approval.

I deleted the ads to the offending sites anyways and sent them an email which they have just replied to letting me know about my sites.

They told me that my sites were bridge pages and I need to make them more useful to the end user.

The sites are technically bridge pages as they link through to the merchants but they all have at least 200 words of original content about the products they are promoting.

If they are considered bridge pages then all affiliate sites are bridge pages in my eyes.

Short of removing the affiliate links on these sites I don’t see what else I can do to please Google.

I’m going to try and cut down on the number of sites I promote with AdWords and aim to reduce my reliance on it in preparation for the day when my account gets cancelled.

The worrying thing is if these sites offend Google AdWords what’s to say they won’t soon offend Google regular, organic search and get the boot from there too?

I never really worried about the dominance of Google but perhaps now it is time to start!

Final Warning: Your Google AdWords account has multiple violations is a post from: How I Got Rich

Just seen this little tool for WordPress on another affiliate blog and thought I’d post it here incase anyone hadn’t seen it.

The idea is that it records which keyword your sales came from or something like that.  Read the full story here:

http://shanebrown.co.uk/new-wordpress-keyword-tracking-tool-plugin/

Keyword Tracking Plugin for Adwords is a post from: How I Got Rich

Recently I set up a new site that I was going to promote via PPC using Google’s  AdWords.  I set the site up and created a page for each item and put an image of the product on the page and an Easy Content Unit comparing the prices from different merchants.

Instead of adding content I decided to start some AdWords campaigns for the site to get the ball rolling and hits coming in before I got around to writing and adding the content.

The next time I logged into AdWords to check the campaign I noticed my keywords had a 1/10 quality score and the reason given was something to do with a poor quality site.   The low quality score means my ads will hardly ever, if at all, be shown.

I then added the content, waited for it to get indexed and started a new campaign on the same account for the site.  Google noticed straight away and gave me another 1/10 quality score.

So now I have registered a new domain and am in the process of moving the content over.

Once I have done that I will start a new campaign for the site and hopefully it will pass Google’s criteria.

Fingers crossed…

Beware the Google Slap is a post from: How I Got Rich

My credit card has expired and due to my location I have been able to get another one.  This has lead to my Adwords account getting suspended.

Does anyone know of a way around this?  Any tips, other ways to pay?

Cheers.

AdWords Without a Credit Card? is a post from: How I Got Rich

Just a quick update about this topic. According to AdWords, yesterday my campaign got 197 impressions. Bear in mind this wasn’t campaign wasn’t running a whole day but during that period my site got five hits.

So five as a percentage of 197 is 2.5%. Now I know my site is only at number two but that is a pretty poor showing. Needless to say no one has clicked on my ad.

I will wait and see what the stats are like for the next few days and report back.

Google AdWords vs Google Keyword Tool part II is a post from: How I Got Rich

My regular readers will know I often like to grumble about the lack of accuracy of the Google Keywoord Tool.

Getting a site to number one in Google usually gives me about 2-4% of the number given by the Google Keyword Tool for exact search in hits per month i.e. Google Keyword Tool says 14,000 exact matches for my sites main keyword but my site will only get about 500 hits per month making it completely unprofitable.  Either no one is clicking through or the Google Keyword Tool is well out.

So to find out I have just setup an AdWords campaign for one of my sites main keyword.  The Keyword Tool said there were 12,100 exact searches for this keyword last month but my site at number two in Google only got 140 hits in that month (1%).

Lets see how many impressions my ad gets (and lets hope it doesn’t cost me too much!).

Google AdWords vs Google Keyword Tool is a post from: How I Got Rich

I’ve had quite a productive day today.  This morning I wrote a few new pages of content for one of my old sites that was languishing  around page three in Google for ages and since I moved it to Wordpress has crawled up to the bottom of page one.  I’ve slowly been adding more posts to it to help improve it’s ranking.  There has been no change as of yet but I hope soon it will move up to the top.  Its more of a seasonal site for the autumn but it can’t do any harm getting it to the top now.  According to the Google KeyWord Tool it got 18,100 exact local searches last month so hopefully a few of them will click through if I get it higher up the page.  At the moment it gets about 100-200 uniques a month and makes a few sales.  Its never going to make me rich but as I’ve already bought the domain I might as well use it and see if I can make a few quid from it.

Ranking for Two Keywords

Regarding the above site I would ideally like to get it ranking for two keywords.  One is, lets say, red monkeys and the other is big footballs.  The product I am promoting does both things but has two different names that is referred to.  The domain I have used is redmonkeys.org.uk and the site is on the first page for that term but for the keyword big footballs the site is nowhere to be seen.  I’m not sure the best way to go about getting the site ranked for the other keyword.  I’m starting to build backlinks using that keyword as anchor text and I’ve started using the keyword more throughout the website so hopefully things should pick up.

If I focus on getting the site ranked for big footballs is there any way it will affect the ranking already achieved for red monkeys?

Another thing I did today was add a new product (well the first product) to my ‘big site’ and setup a PPC campaign for it.  Hopefully I get lucky with this product and start to see some sales come though.  My aim is to add one new product to this site per day and set up a PPC campaign for it.

Busy Beaver is a post from: How I Got Rich

I went away for the weekend as it was the King’s birthday and therefore a long weekend.  We heading off to Koh Chang which is one of the Thai islands.  Koh Chang means Elephant Island and we saw quite a few elephants wandering around and also went for a ride on them which involved swiming with them at the end.

I decided to leave my PPC campaigns running over the weekend as I had been doing quite well leading up to the weekend and on the Sunday I found an Internet cafe and had a quick check of my stats.  Unfortunately most of the items I was promoting with PPC has sold out so although I was getting the traffic and clicks through to the merchants hardly any sales were made.

I am now trying to find some more items to promote that are popular but still in stock as I reckon there is about another week left of people buying Christmas presents online.

I’m away next week until the new year so will be trying to make the most of the Christmas shopping before I go.

Anyone know how to find which Christmas items are proving popular so far this year?

Weekend Break is a post from: How I Got Rich