Hi, I was wondering if someone could shed some light on how to redirect a landing page yet retain quality score. My landing page has good bid prices right now but when I recently implemented a php redirect my bid prices went up. People have told me cloaking is the only way to retain the quality score that I want. How do I redirect a visitor and not search engines? Any help is very appreciated.
1. Buy a domain 2. Forward it to your hoplink 3. Advertise as a publisher(same display and destination url) and you will get higher QS and lower costs.
blackman..can you prove this? You get gret quality score just doing a simple redirect to whatever vendor's product?? I want to see an example of you using a domain using a redirect with only your hoplink and great QS...and i am talking about a campaign which is running for some weeks. bm: the domain redirect which you can set in CPanel etc. also ONLY does a simple .htaccess entry and redirects. The OP said his bids increased...and i am pretty confident that what you're saing is not the case....maybe it might work for a couple a days...but theres no way to keep great QS just using a simple redirect. correct me if i am wrong.
GeorgR I haven't tried that method of redirecting, but I think you should be able to get good quality score, because you are not using affiliate links, which bring your QS down. I know that simple redirect like tinyurl.com will affect the QS and also it's not allowed, but domain forwarding should be ok. I am not an expert in this area, so I might be wrong. This is just what I think.
Looks like GeorgR beat me to the punch, your advise is unfounded and Google will either flag the ad immedialey or in very short time Offering advise such as this when you have clearly indicated that you are "not an expert in this area" will result in the member wasting their money on a Domain as well as the time invested in implimenting your advise I'm sure you only meant well but.....
vstar Google will not do anything to your ad or campaign, if you use the method that I mentioned above. The only thing, that you might not be able to get is a "Great" quality score. Apart from that, you won't have any problems. Do a Google search on any product, you will find some websites that simply redirect their ad to other website. Not using affiliate links, but using domain forwarding.
Uhm..once you lose your QS it can take you some time to build up "rep" again for google. Please keep in mind we're dealing with real money here. G takes enough as it is. Thats why you better start out "proper"....its not even about QS and saving costs. If google bans or bitchslaps a domain of you REALLY are in trouble - redirects are just so old and common that it defies any logic google would honor those with good QS over real landers.
GeorgR Yes, of course, I agree. Having a proper real landing page is much better, then any redirects, affiliate links, etc. That's why everyone are trying to advertise as a publisher
Would the following example spell out what you're saying? (none of these URLs are real) 1) Niche: Ringtones 2) Advertiser(company PROVIDING rintones): T-mobile 3) Affiliate Link: www.tmobile(dot)com/ringtones/affid=?123456 4) URL you just bought: www.bestringtones(dot)com(this is what would be forwarded to www.tmobile(dot)com/ringtones/affid=123456) 5) DISPLAY URL in adWords adcopy would be www.bestringtones(dot)com 6) DESTINATION URL would also be www.bestrigtones(dot)com but when clicked would be taken to the www.tmobile(dot)com/ringtones/affid=123456 page for signup. Isn't this a redirect that goolge DOES NOT like and will 'penalize' for? I'm not attacking anyone in anyway, just trying to get some clarity.
That depends on how you look at it, if your quality score continues to drop then your CPC rises and your keyword become "inactive for search" Plus as someone else mentioned, you will have done harm to your "historical record" All of this will have a negative effect on your future campaigns
The easiest and simplest way of doing it is give a link on top of the landing page with exiciting offer.. and entice users to click to go to another page
stevefox You should be fine. Domain forwarding is NOT the same as simple crappy tinyurl.com redirect, that's why I think Google allows it.
I'm not exactly sure what the difference here is between a "domain forward", some 3rd party "tinyurl" forward, .htaccess forward, and good old Header 301 Redirects [via server or script function]. These are all the same unless "domain forwarding" is something special that I'm not aware of. I might be wrong here but the DNS system does not facilitate anything above resolving domain names to IP addresses. No ports, no forwards, just domain names to IP addresses with a few Resource Records thrown in. So the argument here IMO is... PPC -> your domain landing page -> user clicked link -> clickbank hoplink -> merchant PPC -> your domain auto 301 redirect -> clickbank hoplink -> merchant On our 1st choice, Google just sees our landing page, and if there is more than one page on this domain, with a bit of content, Google probably does not flag it as another useless affiliate marketing site. We get a high quality score, low CPC, and have the chance to pre-sell offer, and do a bit more analytics. On the 2nd choice, Google sees a pure affiliate marketing campaign, drops the quality score, increase CPC, and so on. And the more redirects you do to reach the merchant, the worse it gets. In my last campaign I increased from one clickbank redirect, to two redirects [1st one being my domain so I could log the data] and my CPC doubled.
If you know how to pre-sell an offer, and have a good landing page... Yes. If you have a bad landing page, definitely no. If you don't, you still can win in the sense that you will have better quality score with a landing page, over a redirect from an empty/fake domain, to a know affiliate network hop, to the merchant site. Though the best solution is to have a mini-site, rather than a landing page site. About 6-12 pages. It work out much better... You get a high quality score, can target you keywords better, and can even get an ad position above the merchant's own ad space, while having lower CPC for the same keywords... [obviously, this takes some work -- like some good backlinks to your site, relevant content, targeted ad text to that content] Though I don't think too many merchants will like that. But there is a solution to that too... Don't make it look like 12 pages of landing pages... Make it look organic and have multiple affiliate paths/links. So if the merchant ever complains, send that traffic to another one in the same niche.
BinaryBits Thanks, nice advice. I am not very good at building websites, but I'll try to do something.
How would this be handled with zip submits? From my understanding, having a landing page for zips or email would often lower your conversion rates.