“It was easy. Not anymore. Stop living in the past, move on” – That’s what I can suggest to those dreaming about the good ol’ days of AdWords marketing.
Things have changed and major players have added many rules to their systems.
The reason is simple – to weed out poor quality advertisers. It makes sense as Google has stated many times that user experience is of the highest importance to them. Users unhappy, they’ll use another engine. Pretty simple. That’s the rule by which Google and Bing are now playing. But while this seems like a positive direction to move, many disagree about the extra high level rules added.
Simple Things Make Big Difference
It was ok to advertise on Adwords or MSN with a simple landing page driving traffic to your offer or playing the arbitrage game. Now you can’t even get traffic if your page doesn’t contain a privacy policy, disclaimers, contact information.
And there are different rules for specific niche markets. Some won’t even be accepted like bizopp or data entry markets as this is deemed unethical by Google in general. And in general it is, but not 100% of the time.
Landing Pages are Dead
Another thing that made many direct response marketers’ lives miserable was bridge-page policy. What this means is that no longer can you use one single landing page to advertise. This policy is strong on both Google and Bing now.
Now in order to be eligible to advertise you need to have ‘substantial content’ on your website. What these search giants mean by that remains a mystery. 3rd party content won’t work either. It must be original. Some reported starting a site with 20 unique articles is the way to go. However some say that this won’t do anything as the page you’re driving traffic to will still be considered a bridge page if you link from your landing page to a product or service. So now your whole purpose of advertising must not be to direct traffic to someone else, but keep visitors on your website. That’s DM’s nightmare as we all know that one page without links and a call to action is what makes money for us.
Pointless to Argue
Are these things really necessary? Isn’t this just a little too much? We do understand that consumers want better quality results on search pages. Heck, I love Google search for quality results it provides me. But who is Google to step in and start regulating the markets. Is it for them to decide that business opportunities are scams and no data entry products in history is going to be legit?
Isn’t is up to the consumer to decide whether advertisement is relevant or not by voting with their clicks, time spent on site and conversion rates? That is something many of us ask ourselves. But arguing with the giants is pointless. They control their own platforms so we’re at their mercy. One always has a choice to move on to some other places to advertise.
What To Do Next?
This leaves you to decide for yourself. Are you willing to spend time and energy pleasing the search engines or not? If you are building an authority site on a ‘clean’ subject (fishing, electronics, sports) you might as well start building a plan for search marketing. However, if you are a direct response marketer looking for quick results and don’t have time for playing the silly games, it’s not for you. Not anymore.
With some many new traffic sources opened up, dabbling in the pay per click search marketing seems a waste of time. Why create 20 unique article website with user based rating system and link to an online store just so you could see if the campaign works in the first place? Makes no sense. Instead, try other methods like contextual targeted campaigns, banner advertising or email marketing that still allow wide amplitude of marketing tactics.
