How I Got Rich

AdWords Ban

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.

Final Warning: Your Google AdWords account has multiple violations

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!

Getting all my sites to number 1 in Google

This might sound like an obvious goal but for now I am going to focus on getting my existing sites to number one in Google.  Most of them are at number one in Google for their main keyword but not all of them.

Normally I start a new site, put up some content and wait for it to get to number one.  If after a while it is not on page one or close then I leave it and move on.  But as I have vowed to not make any new sites for a while I am thinking I might as well get the sites I have to number one so I can see if any of them will get any traffic.

I have sites for keywords that get, according to the Google keyword tool, anything from 3,000 to 50,000 exact searches a month.  As I’ve now realised the Google keyword tool is not to be believed and does not even give a rough idea of searches.  This has made me think that I might be sitting on a site that gets 100′s of 1000′s of exact searches each month and I won’t know until I get the site to number one.

So with that in mind I am going back to my older sites that don’t rank well and seeing what I can do to get them to number one.

I’ve never really done any work on back links so I might have to finally get around to giving it a serious go.  I will also be adding content which I will probably end up outsourcing as I don’t have much spare time any more.  It is quite expensive at £10 for 500 words but probably cost effective in the long run?

Anyone got any tips for getting a site to number one in Google?

Another New Site For Summer

I launced a new site last week (#24) and it made its first sale yesterday.

This is another keyword niche domain site and is for a niche that will probably only get sales in the summer.

When I was researching the keywords I must have had the Google Keyword Tool set to broad because when I checked it just now it was 9,900 rather than the 60,000 I thought it was!  Oh dear.

I also registered the domain with an abbreviation of the keywords as that gets a large amount of searches too.  I was initially going to park this domain but now as it turns out to get more searches than the domain I started working on I think I will develop it.

I’ve not worked on two different sites in the same niche before so I will have to be careful not to duplicate any content.

Right, I’m off to go and recheck the last batch of domains I registered using the Google Keyword Tool but making sure I select ‘exact’ match this time!

How Many Hits Do You Get When You’re Number 1 in Google?

I’ve had a look at a couple of my sites which are ranked number one in Google.  I wanted to find out what percentage of the total number of searches a site gets when it is number one in Google.

One of my sites that is number of a search term that got 22,200 local exact matches in May got 140 hits from Google users searching on that term in the last seven days. This works out as 3% (140 as a % of 5012 = 3% (rounded up)).

Another keyword got 5,400 exact local matches for May which is 1,219 in 7 days. This site got 56 visits from Google users searching on that keyword string which is 5% (rounded up).

Has anyone got any comparable data?

update: another one of my sites is now number two in the Google serps with no ads above the number one site.  The site is optimised for a keyword that got 14,800 local exact searches last month.  It is not a seasonal item so should be similiar this month.  In the past three days it has had an average of of 5 clicks a day from Google.  This works out to a 1% click through rate for a site in number two position.

Where is my site Google?

Yesterday I saw that one of my sites that had recently made it to the number one spot was no where to be seen in the Google search engine results pages (SERPS). This wasn’t one of my main earning sites but it made me realise that this could happen to any of my sites and if it were to happen to a big earner I’d be in trouble!

I hadn’t registered any new domains for a while as I had decided to work on my existing sites and try and get them ranking a bit better. But after Google’s treatment of one of my well ranked sites I decided I better get some more sites up and running to try and spread my earnings across multiple sties and therefore spread the risk of losing a site and a revenue stream

I saw down with my girlfriend and we went through some ideas for niches. Coming up with niches is probably my joint weakest area along with getting links. Luckily she came up with a couple of 40k exact match domains and one 60k exact match domain and a few 12k ones. I registered about five domains and got the first site up later that day. A few of these sites are seasonal and will make most of their sales in the summer months so I am working on getting those up and running first. The others should makes sales all year round so I will get those sites up and running after the summer ones are done. Think I will take some time out this weekend and get them all up and running.

If anyone wants to swap any backlinks get in touch.

Ranked Number One in Google

One of my first sties (#5) that I set-up back in February when I was first getting into affiliate marketing has today been ranked number one in Google for its main keyword.

This search term got 12,100 local exact matches for May according to the Google Keyword Tool so it should start getting a few more hits.  Previously it was hovering around the bottom of page one.

Although it is at the top of the Google search engine results page (SERP)  there are three shopping links above it and three paid Adwords ads above it which is a bit of a shame!

Also this site doesn’t have many products on it as there are hardly any merchants with affiliate programmes in this niche.  There are lots of other sites selling items in this niche on page one of Google but unfortunately they do not have affiliate programmes.

The site was made using WordPress which I have also used for some of my other sites.  Part of me loves WordPress due to the ease and speed new sites can be launched but another part of me hates it for it inflexibility.  I also love how quickly pages get indexed from WordPress sites.  When I get a free day I will sit down and make my own theme that I am happy with and then I will use WordPress more and more.

How often does Google update its listings?

A fair amount of my sites were on page one in Google for their keywords.

One was as high as number three on page one so was getting around 10 hits a day.  The other sites were mainly found on the bottom half of page one so were getting a few hits a day. Some were making the odd sale but most were making none.   They were all for 5,000 to 10,000 monthly searched keyword niches.

I check my sites each day to see where they are ranking and there hadn’t been much movement until I checked a few days ago to find most of them had all gone down the Google search enging results page (serps) on the same day.

This lead me to wonder how often does Google update its index?  I thought it was a constant process but as a lot of my pages all jumped on the same day it leads me to think otherwise.

It doesn’t really matter but it can’t help to know as much as you can about Google considering most search engine traffic comes via the big G.

Now I have the task of frantically updating my sites in the hope they will return to page one.  If they don’t make it back some will have to be cut lose to allow me to focus on the small number of my sites that are making sales.