Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples
There has been a bit of chat on various forums over the last couple of days about Google AdWords tweaking its landing page algorithm, see here and here.
So with that in mind I thought I would publish a guide on how to create a landing page that will comply with Google’s guidelines. I’ve been marketing online using landing pages and Google AdWords for around 6 years now. Over that time I’ve seen many developments and changes and have been in constant touch with various members of the AdWords team directly. Below are the results of my experiences. They may work for you and they may not, but if you follow them, you should be able to market effectively using landing pages.
First things first though, experience tells me that landing pages are no longer an effective way of marketing on AdWords. So why am I writing this then? I hear you ask. Well, traditional landing pages that contain a few links, a paragraph or 2 of pre-sell text/product reviews are dead and buried. Don’t even try it, Google will catch up with you eventually and raise your bids to silly prices. Take this example of one of my old landing pages, Google banned this about 18 months ago.
If Google thinks the only reason your landing page exists is to funnel users to another site then its a landing page, and they will penalise you accordingly.
Landing pages now have to be incorporated into a fully functioning web site with lots of original content. So yes, you can still market with landing pages but the landing pages must be within the context of a full site. Here’s the rules as I see them:
Your landing page website should contain the following pages as standard:
1. Sitemap - this should be accessible from all pages of your site.
2. Privacy Policy - lots of resources on the web to create one of these, just Google “privacy policy”. If you are in the UK then consider applying for the Data Protection Act. It only costs around £35.
3. Terms and Conditions - as above, here is a good resource.
4. Contact Us - with full physical postal address and telephone number.
5. About Us - description of what the purpose of the website is and the business operating it, i.e. you.
OK now that you have these basic pages, consider adding these pages too:
1. News - add a page where you regularly update with newsworthy stories related to the niche you are promoting.
2. Blog - like a news page but you can also add editorial comments here and opinions.
3. How To or What Is Guide - pages/pages with detailed unique content describing the product/service you are promoting and how they work. I.e. if you have a coupon site then add some pages describing what coupons are and how they work, an idiots guide really.
4. FAQ’s - think of every question related to the product/service you are promoting then list them and answer them here.
5. Glossary - every industry has its own terminology, create an A-Z of industry specific jargon here and define it.
6. Deals/Offer pages - again everyone has specific deals and offers, so list the ones relevant to your product/service on their own page.
7. Individual product/pages - likewise the chances are that your product/service will have different components. I.e. a certain brand of credit card will have a gold card, platinum card, reward card etc. So build pages for each product containing very detailed information, more so that you would find on a traditional landing page.
8. Submit your review - offer your users the opportunity to submit their own product/reviews. Not only does this create stickiness but it gives you free content.
So, you now have the structure of what the site should look like. Now for the landing page, first thing to do is to look at the AdWords guidelines for landing pages, it contains some good advice:
Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
If your site displays advertising, distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your landing page consists of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), you should provide as much information as you can beyond what your ad describes. For example, if your ad mentions <’Free travel information,’ your landing page should feature free travel information (versus links to other sites that do).
You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.
So, if you follow my suggestions above and Google’s own advice then you should have the perfect landing page website. As long as you have all of this structure in place then the actual landing page itself shouldn’t present a problem, here’s how to structure it:
1. Create unique product/service reviews for whatever you are promoting. Do not just cut and paste text straight from the merchants site.
2. Include some users reviews on the page too, as well as your own.
3. List some comparable products/services from competitors.
4. List some special offers, unique discount codes on this page. This is perceived as extra value to the visitor.
5. Add some links to other products/services that are related but not the same as you are promoting. So lets say you are promoting Plasma TV’s. Add some links to DVD players, specialist cables, remote controls etc.
Thats it really, as I have said there is no magic formula and the landing page doesn’t have to be that complex. It simply must contain original content and be of value to the visitor. So a landing page with the above 5 elements that is presented within a full site of other original content will withstand the Google AdWords algorithm. Noy only that but you will have actually built a decent quality website that you can maintain and build up with content for years to come. You never know, it could even end up being indexed well with the natural serps so you don’t even have to rely on AdWords for traffic!
Almost forgot, with regard to affiliate links and masking them, my advice is to always mask them. The main reason for this is to avoid certain anti-virus software which has been known to make them invisible. I don’t think it has a major effect on the AdWords algorithm but I would say to mask them, just in case.
Below is a screen shot of my broadband providers site. Despite not containing all of the elements I mentioned above it has been passed by Google and meets all of their landing page guidelines.
I do hope this guide has been useful, please leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or further ideas on how to make a successful landing page for Google AdWords.
What I’m listening to right now: Digital Underground - “Doowutchyalike” - anyone remember this from 1999?
Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Google AdWords. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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[...] full article is here, you should read it to understand what each of these elements [...]
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[...] written a great guide about how a landing page, if you can call it that anymore, should be made. Click here to read it. Heres the basic step by step to making one: Your landing page website should contain the following [...]
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[...] Re: Broadband on Adwords Also consider account history into the equation, when i started my ppc account i drove alot of longtail traffic to great quality landing pages and ensured my CTR was above 5% i did this for about 2-3 months before starting mass campaigns which i knew would lower my click through rate and it’s lowered my bids drastically. Consider relevancy of ad copys to landing page texts. Hell just checkout keirons PPC google landing page guide Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples [...]
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[...] Make your Landing Page look like a blog or an article website. Write few articles and link them in your footer. When Google spider(bot) reads your Landing Page, it will think that it is a blog or an article website. I found this simple tricks when i read Kieron Donoghue’s blog post. [...]
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[...] Re: Any good sample of Landing Page For PPC? Here’s a great article on creating a sound landing page that shouldn’t get penalized by Google: Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples [...]
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
Great article again Kieron. Really good list of what to include.
Interesting that you still call these ‘landing pages’ when they’ve evolved into a fully fledged content site.
How much time do you spend each month on updating a site like that?
Hi Stephen, thanks for your comments.
The point of my post was really to say that landing pages as we know them now just aren’t enough to get passed by AdWords. The landing page has to be part of a larger website offering unique content that is of value to the user, otherwise it will be penalised.
Ideally I should be spending a few hours a week updating a site like that, doesn’t always happen though
Great post as usual Kieron, i have to agree the days of throwing up 1 page and tweaking to improve CTR is long gone.
Do you create the landing pages yourself, if so, what software do you use to create them?
Great post. I must confess, all my own landing pages aren’t as good as what you describe here… but they haven’t been affected *yet* and I know exactly what I have to do, so I am working towards it.
I find it amazing that people on the thread you posted to simply don’t want to listen to your advice. If it’s not what they WANT to do, they ain’t gonna go there. Google is wrong, not them. Time for a reality check people. Either shape up to the new regime or ship out.
More room for my ads that way, lol
I think this is good advice for any website, although I haven’t bothered doing it on my own sites. BTW, I like the new blog design.
nice article indeed!
Great article and great advice
Very helpful guide. Something I will very likely use myself and have linked too from my blog also.
I’ll add this blog to my reader.
Josh.
Remeber me http://www.here.org.uk/2007/01/nice-suprise-in-my-inbox.html
well google has just slapped £5 a click on all my top keywords
i was spending £7000 a year to make £25000 with google the keywords were only between 0.03p - 0.06p
and i had no compertion
now its goner overnight to say im gutted is a understatement.
looks like im going to have to try and work hard on seo.
and look for a job
sadly its all agency factory work. back to a 40 hour week for peanuts.
im not giving up its just made me realise not to put all your eggs in one basket and put your trust in google
Very nice simple guidelines for an effective site you listed, would be great for newbies and experienced people alike to create a template framework for future sites.
I have just been “Google Slapped”. Is there a way back by using these guidelines or should I start a new site?
Does Google check for these items on a site using a bot or is it manual?
Are they trying to bite off the hand that feeds them, they must earn millions from affiliates and now if they put us out of business or make it hard for us to operate, how are they meant to get our money? I understand that they want people to go directly to what they are searching for, but on spelling mistakes etc. that just may never happen, we help the customer get what they are looking for, google should be in favour of our actvitys.
Nice summary Kieron.
Here is a summary i did sometime ago about how to improve your adwords quality score, it maybe of some help:
http://dfinitive.com/blog/ppc/10-easy-ways-to-improve-your-quality-score/
Superb article Kieron!
I’ve had a few of my landing pages hit and to be honest they are lacking having an SEO’d site behind them and are pretty much just landing page.
I obviously need to get these now fully owrked on and up to standard, you got any idea on when have sorted them how long till they will be re-checked and bids to sensible price?!
Wardy, if you have an account manager at AdWords just call them and they will get them reviewed in a couple of hours. Even if you don’t still call up and hassle them to review your site, they will
I wrote up a case study you might be interested in here:
http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/10-ways-to-increase-your-adwords-quality-score-a-mini-case-study/
Kieron,
do you think single page websites are dead and buried as far as Adwords is concerned? I notice that some of your own sites are quite sparse in terms of their content eg. http://www.mothersday-flowers.org.uk/
Are you able to run PPC campaigns for these sites?
Dazza, I ran a campaign for that site earlier this year and it worked fine. However it would probably get banned if I was to try it again now. But like everything with Google there will be sites that slip through the net and may last a while before getting banned. My advice is to follow the steps I outlined above and plan for the long term.
Nice article. I must say that as much as I am annoyed at Google’s interference, I am much more tired of going to MFA sites that offer absolutely no useful content. I will not be sorry to see them go. I will also not be sorry to see sites with small articles that aren’t even human readable because they are so keyword stuffed. Enough of this crap. Put up a good website, spend some time researching, email your list when you have new news(weekly or so) and you will do well and provide a service to the community.
Best Regards,
TomG. - CEO, TMG Computers, Inc.
Kieron,
Congrats on this article.
This is a great summary of landing pages how to.
One quick comment though, the landing pages guidelines change by language, and while your article is correct for English, I know that some parts of this are not checked for Hebrew landing pages at all.
Great post and I’m now applying your suggestions. Will see how it goes. Thanks!
Hi Kieron
Just would like to ask what would be the effect if we were to include some of the standard items listed above? Would google approve it?
Thanks
Goh - yes they should do but chances are that without all the elements I listed then you will get banned pretty quick.
Just to update, on a coupel of my sites that were banned I did complete change and phoned up for re-review but got a negative response back.
What I have done now is to leave one of the sites as it is on the same domain with all the new content and see if it does naturally get re-reviewed and then on another site I have re=-created it with all the new content on a new domain. Currently the site on the new domain is getting listed but will be interesing to see if the one left on the original domain recovers or not.
Thanks for your quick reply.
This is some very good advice you’ve provided here. Thanks ALOT for this as this post has given me quite a handful of ideas to increase my quality score.
Google is overstepping its mark by trying to build the web in its image. And an inconsistent image at that.
If I search for a product I don’t want to delve through pages of padded out trash made to please Google. I know what I want, just show me the damn product & the price.
What next, fluffed 3 pages of content to sell a tap washer? All to please Google. No thanks.
This post was very helpful. I did have a lot of out-dated information on creating landing sites but just hadn’t tried it yet. Thanks for the info.
great article! my one question is, what are the chances of the google police actually finding your landing page? Is there a monetary trigger for the adsense folks look into who is making all this money?
What if I use a page within my blog as a landing page?
Will that work?
Is still better to have a separate website for each affiliate campaign?
Thanks for the advice.
Francesco
Hi Kieron,
Good post. I think Google would be pleased this sort of discussion is going on. If landing pages need to be ‘real pages’ then that is a good thing for the Internet in general.
Hello
Very interesting information! Thanks!
Bye
This is probably a stupid question. I’m not an affiliate marketer, and I’m just getting started using adwords. Can’t an affiliate just put in their affiliate link into the ad rather than use a landing page? What is the point of a landing page?
do you suggest just throwing up a CMS system? Seems like the easiest way to go. Use drupal or something similar. Can get what you’re up describing up in a matter of minutes other then the unique content. Ugh I hate making unique content
Also are you testing stuff before you put up a site of this capacity? Seems like a lot of work to put in for a niche you don’t know is going to convert or not.
Applying the landing page commandments right away…
Vijay
CodeSaint
Thanks Kieron seems like is further updating their algo as i just got slaped after 3 smooth months
Great guide but there is something more to it though. I have implemented most of the listed suggestions long time ago but it did not help me to lower the minimum keyword bids. I guess there are niches/products that Google does not like and would not lower the bid prices even though all the guidelines are satisfied. My 2c.
Hi Nikolai,
If you implementated all the changes but your min bid is still high i suggest you move to a new domain.
Sean
One of the best article I’ve read about a landing page. Bravo!
I am been making the edits you recommend and I appreciate all your suggestions. My site is similar to your broadband site in the fact that I draw people in via adwords and then direct them to external links from my landing page. My clicks have gone up over the past year since all the changes and I am trying to mask my links using iframes and I and running into some issues with IE7 not carring the data over correctly. I was curious how you have masked your domains on your site.
thanks, Jeff
Very interesting info, with some great little tips. Thanks!
whats to stop us from using other services such as Yahoo or MSN to create simple landing pages? Do they have the same policy?
I am building a website with all the standard stuff that you mentioned, but th epage that my ad will go to will contain eight text / adverts, do you think that this will be okay?
I’ll be honest.. I didn’t read all the comments, before posting this question, but.. What if you used a blog post as your landing page? So it’s a full website, shows content and in the post you do some sort of review?
Can that be considered a landing page and would that pass google rules?
I was wondering how you put a landing page out there. I’m not too good at this. I enjoyed your article.It’s like a website,but you don’t pay for the domain,because it’s part of your site? If so,how do you break them apart,I’m a bigginer,if this is annoying I’m sorry.I’ve built websites in the past,and all this is new to me. If you could send me to a site with more info,I would really appreciate it,thankyou for your time,Sincerely Darren Taylor.Or if you hae a moment to explain,Thankyou Kieron
Yeh, thanks, Kieron, it’s quite a task these days to create a landing page which leads me to wonder, if I am going to all this trouble just to market an affiliate product why am I not in business with my own product for myself? And then let others do my affiliate marketing for me!
I still think you can’t beat the good old-fashioned promotions of ezine ads and emailing your own opt-in subscriber list for affiliate products. Just a simple “I use this, it’s great” endorsement still goes a long way.
Word-of-mouth recommendation will always be the top marketing strategy in the world.
Seems Adwords doubled their bids overnight for a lot of search terms. Great post.
Thanks for the awesome advice Kieron. That old cliche about content comes to mind again.
Kieron,
This post is truly invaluable.
My only request: can we see an example of what the landing page should look like? I want to know how to effectively place the 5 elements with the actual offer on the page. This is where I don’t understand.
Say if I was to enter the dating niche. Would I place a image of a couple at the top which would go to the merchant’s offer with the 5 elements underneath the image?
Please I need help here.
I hope I made myself clear here. I just need to see a visual of what it should look like.
Thanks in advance!
George
WOW!!! Great post. I am still not sure that my landing page is needed and I am still thinking about getting rid of it. I just can’t figure out how to make the language of my page change automatically for the country that it’s accessed in. IE; going to google.com in Japan goes to the Japanese page automatically. Any ideas?
Great post. Just wondering if I should ditch my page now or keep it. What would Brian Boitano do?
Geez, now I know why… I feel a little STUPID now… but, on the other hand, gratefull.. I am going to change my pages right away. Thanks a lot. I will let you know of my results!
Thanks for your advices Kieron! Been new in affiliate marketing isn’t easy. Actually I was working in my first landing page when I found your post and It’s really great take advantage of your years of experience working with Google. Good stuff! Thanks again.
Good article, I had one of my campaigns suspended because of the lack of content. I couldn’t be bothered doing all the work.
I guess if you’re going to go about doing all that work, you should re purpose all the content for multiple campaigns.
Thanks for these stuffs… By the way “Is there any limitation links to a landing page? If so how many and why?”
This is very helpful. Do yo have any examples of landing pages? I need to build one for my site. Thank you.
Thanks again for your advices. They are coming in the right moment for those who are starting with google adwords and looking for success in their campaings.Good stuff!
Cesar
Great info, still very useful for any affiliate starting off in PPC
Thanks, the information is very helpful, im researching currently before entering the world of affiliate marketing and PPC and have taken on board that building up an actual site with landing pages and not single page sites seems the way to go.
Im glad il be starting off with the right approach thanks to the info here that ive read and at other blogs and forums too.
I’ve been away from the PPC side of things for a few years now (was always traditionally into organic SEO). Seems like this whole area has got really complicated now. Oh well, such is life. (Paul is feeling tired!).
This is actually a double edged sword though because while you do what to present the user with quality content and get them what they need, the argument is that too many distractions on a page will lead the user to bounce or not perform a conversion you need to make your revenue model work.
It’s a fine line to tread but I think google needs to recognize that you can still have quality targeted landing pages but still need to make some money at the same time.
Great article and just the information i was after as just had my quality score implode. Will try the things you have mentioned to see if they can help to reverse the collapse in the quality score and if not looks like yahoo not google will be getting my online marketing spend.
This is terrific explanation. I am so very impressed
after google said this i used this pages in my blog , actually it make my blog stronger and my visitors like the blog with ( Privacy Policy,Terms and Conditions and About ) i also put my sitmap link in my blogroll too for good SEO .
Excellent Article!
I will print it and post it to my board. It is an excellent resource, better than a lot of books about the same subject.
Thanks!
Alex.
online web stores
Being a newby to the Google Science School this thread and trackbacks has been hugely beneficial. I gave up with Adwords after continually being advised to up the budget. I never was priveliged to have a Google contact that was a real person! And actually, I don’t think I had a hot lead and money transacted even when I was hitting page 1. Thanks for helping us beat a monopoly.
Nice post Kieron! I really enjoy it. I just started Adwords in a few weeks ago.
I have recently had my adwords traffic drop due to quality score issues, now I can see where I have been going wrong. Great post, keep it up…
hi great post, i stumbled across this srticle today and realised i actually used your broadband site a few months back and made sure that i followed the links etc well done
The example is really useful… sometime the important of masking the affiliate link always forgotten especially by newbie
Kieron made very simple how to create unique landing pages which we prevent to get ban and not only for adword unique content as well helpful if proper utilize.