Hey… can you guys hear that? I think I may be able to hear the winds of change advancing upon affiliate land!
In recent weeks I’ve been hearing campfire-esque affiliate horror stories told in hushed tones from some corners of the internet. There are tales of affiliate websites being hit with the dreaded Google slap and *gasp* some of them have unique content.
Google’s New “Low Quality” Algo Tweak
It was only ever a matter of time – but in recent days Google’s very own Matt Cutts has announced that there has been an algo change to try and weed out sites with “shallow or low-quality content“. Of course the announcement is very vague in nature, but it’s clear this is a further advance on the Mayday Update which had so many affiliates shuddering in horror.
The key question here is, what constitutes low quality content? I’d suggest that this is something all us affiliates should be giving some mighty careful consideration. “Low quality” is not the same as “Non Unique”. Two recent cases in point from the Google Webmaster help threads when the algo tweak began to bite should serve to illustrate my point neatly: -
The Case Of The Travel Site Owner
A travel site owner found his site complete with unique content had been slapped silly. Now, whether or not this was justified aside Google Employee John Mu posts some useful points to the thread including: -
- “One thing that is very important to us with affiliate-oriented sites is that the site provides enough unique and compelling content of its own, that it would stand on its own feet if the affiliate content were removed.”
- “our algorithms generally tend to prefer sites that are either the original source (saving the user time on clicking through) or sites that have really strong content.“
I really feel for the webmaster in that thread, when you read through it his anguish is all too obvious.
The Case of Unique Not Being Unique Enough
In another thread, a webmaster complains that Google has penalized my entire network of 30+ sites (credit to Lee McCoy who posted the link on Facebook!). He scores a reply from Matt Cutts himself. In this case Matt is saying that although his content is unique on the face of things, it’s not very high quality and therefore not considered unique enough by the algo.
Specific Examples Aside…
What we as affiliates should all be taking away from this is that we need to make sure what we are providing users isn’t just the same as a merchant site, or equal in quality. It must surpass the information people can get by going straight to the merchant.
Due to a lack of wholesale wailing and gnashing of teeth from the affiliate world I’d say that Googles algos are developing subtly. However, as we see time and time again Google constantly raise the bar on us affiliates. I think it’s time for us all to take a step back, look at our sites sites, and ask “Does this add value over and above what my users can find on the merchant site?”.
If the answer is no, or you’re not sure I think it’s time to start working towards changing that. The thing about a truly valuable resource is that it takes a heck of a lot of time and effort to build. In my opinion it’s better to start now and avoid potential pain later. I’m certainly going to do this as of today. My mantra will be “I have to be better than the merchant”.
If the Google boogey man doesn’t eventuate (and lets face it Google love to slide on the boogey man outfit where affiliates are concerned!), my websites will be much better for my efforts and will ultimately benefit my business more.
I’d say that was a win-win, huh? 
January 25th, 2011 at 11:59 am
Hi,
Very interesting and informative article. This week I was looking to setup a new website with affiliate links and this post has given me pause for further thought.
All the best
Andrew
January 25th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
ROFL you had me worried until I checked the two samples of that guys 30 sites. My spammy link sites are better than that. Monetising crap is all well and good, but anyone who builds stuff like that (and I do) should know that it can all come crashing around your ears at any time (and it does),
There is nothing new here that I can see.
January 25th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I came into the affiliate game pretty late on, so I never had it as easy as some of the more experienced affiliates but I always worked to develop sites that are useful.
John Mu’s statement about it needing to stand alone without the affiliate content is quite right. Whenever I develop an affiliate website I always look on it as a monetised content site, rather than a contentised money site. It’s done me pretty well so far, and May Day updates have worked in my favour.
There are exceptions of course, and any decent affiliate will know where he/she can get anyway with thinner stuff – it’s just finding those opportunities.
Glad to have you back by the way Kirsty!
January 25th, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Jez – Hahah – well if you know it can come crashing down at any time and are still happy to proceed on that basis that’s your remit. As for nothing new… on the face of it there’s not. However the point of the post was that there may not be much happening now but that 2011 could be the year when affiliates are squeezed once more.
Andy – thanks, it’s good to be back. Going back to work has been very difficult and I’ve not been finding much time for blogging. I seem to be getting on top of it and finding time to have a bit of inspiration.
I think this year is the year where we actually have to really start taking Googles statements (which haven’t changed really) on affiliate sites a LOT more seriously. I’m fortunate to have a good platform to build on with my sites but it’ll still be a lot of work.
January 25th, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Hi Kirsty,
Well, I should have said “I did” build sites like that, I still have a lot of them, but for the past 10 or 11 months I have been trying to build better sites.
I decided to go down that route after seeing a friend earn more with one decent site than I was with an entire network of crappies, then the MayDay update came along and cemented that strategy.
I was a bit worried when I read this post thinking about my good sites as opposed to the crappies, becuase, now my problem is that my eggs are in far fewer baskets, it would only take one of two of my prize winners to get zapped and I would be in the pit of despair. I dont care about the crappies, they are doomed to get zapped at some point, I always knew that… those were quick bucks which enabled me to fund better stuff, I dont really need them anymore.
The thing with that guys sites is they only had a small parragraph of text on each page on the fist site, and on the second site there were pages that just had images on them. He mentioned he had bought the sites, so perhaps does not have the benefit of having learned the hard way… and I can kinda sympathise with him if he bought stuff that burned up afterwards.
I think Google will keep retreating up the ladder with the sites they rank though. I dont think they are any better at weeding out rubbish, I think they will just focus more on larger sites with more backlinks which they know are harder to build, and which people are more reluctant to play games with because of the investment they make in those larger sites.
I see all this stuff as Google retreating to higher ground. As far as I can tell they are not getting any better at identifying good content vs drivel algorithmically, they are just trying to climb out of the “cess pool” and abandoning the idea of ranking small websites (which are easy to mass produce).
January 26th, 2011 at 9:03 am
Ahh, I see – so you’ve evolved past them.
Definately the examples in the post with the man and his network of sites were very thin. However what I’ve not said here is the reason I made this post in the first place – my lingerie site has gotten slapped along with them. 1,300 pages of hand crafted content that took me 3 years to build. Search engine traffic down 80%
I didn’t mention it in the post because I didn’t want to muddy the waters – I simply don’t know enough about it yet to say anything useful to you guys. I’m still at the guessology stage of proceedings, LOL.
I also wanted to make the stand alone point – if you think your sites are good enough it might be time to take another look and a step back and ask yourself again!
I’m still hoping the issues with Lingerie Brands is some structural thing. I found a few basic problems that might have gotten me mixed up with a spammy site.
I’m lucky because I have other eggs in other baskets. The lost revenue from this site is merely an inconvenience as opposed to the massive hit it would have been a couple years back. My main concern now is to work out if it has indeed been a case of mistaken identity or if my other sites with similar structure have something to worry about.
One thing’s for sure Jez – affiliate marketing is never dull eh??
January 26th, 2011 at 9:34 am
This is exactly what I keep saying to our members.
Affiliates seem to view Google as the enemy, where really it’s your best friend. Become an ally with Google, by adopting it’s values for your visitors, and it will look after you by sending them – hopefully in their droves!
January 26th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Hey Jason – good to see you commenting here
I’m certainly looking forward to trying to improve all of my sites. I already have loads of great ideas – suddenly things are exciting again rather than the same old grind.
I actually really enjoy it when Google starts posturing. It pushes me to be better and that is never a bad thing!
January 26th, 2011 at 11:49 am
i think this is a good thing, thin affiliate sites don’t really and haven’t really ever added value to a merchant.
this forces affiliates to think beyond cookie stuffing or cookie napping and actually add value to the users experience.
higher quality affiliates will also help affiliate industry to grow given that merchants will see how the industry is self-policing in as much as ensuring that only the high value ‘decent’ affiliate sites are successful.
January 26th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
“i think this is a good thing, thin affiliate sites don’t really and haven’t really ever added value to a merchant.”
Nonsense. Does a merchant want more sales or does it want affiliates to add value in some non-defined way? Many affiliate sites that may be considered thin provide good traffic and sales to merchants through good landing page and user funneling techniques.
“this forces affiliates to think beyond cookie stuffing or cookie napping and actually add value to the users experience.”
Good job not all affiliates are up to cookie stuffing and cookie napping isn’t it. We wouldn’t want to give the industry a bad name would we?
January 26th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Hmm, what can I do differently now I know what I shouldn’t be doing? That is the question…
January 27th, 2011 at 1:19 am
It’s a good move by G, in theory… but I’d love to know how an algorithm can determine whether content is of “high enough quality” – you can do almost anything with mathematics, but is this one of them? That’s my question… I can see how a lot of mistakes could be made with this (i.e quality sites being punished such as your lingerie site)…
January 27th, 2011 at 9:21 am
Hi Kirsty,
I know in the past you have mentioned here about moving your sites away from ppc, have you noticed whether this latest Google update has only hit those where you still have an element of ppc or all, even purely organic search driven sites?
January 27th, 2011 at 9:51 am
Hi Nigel,
Lingerie Brands does still have an element of PPC but there are other similarly structured sites in the same boat that haven’t been hit.
January 27th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Great post as usual Kirsty. I do tend to agree with Rebecca’s comment on how an algorithm can determine quality. Surely this is subjective?
January 27th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Hi Emma, I think it definately is subjective. However I have now found out more about the tweaks and I think preference is being shown to sites that aggregate feeds and do clever things with them, thus providing more information about the product than a single merchant could. Makes sense considering the noises Google have been making.
I think Lingerie Brands has been affected because there are lots of such sites in the fashion / underwear sector and rather than me doing something wrong – they are all doing it a lot more right in light of the new changes.
My other unaffected sites are in niches where these sites don’t really operate (thank goodness I can do without 3 slapped sites at once).
I think what I will need to do will be complex but incredibly worthwhile and I’ll ultimately have a stronger site for it. It’s going to involve a complete overhaul of Lingerie Brands, but that’s overdue anyhow.
Fun times ahead huh??!!
January 28th, 2011 at 8:29 am
What you are posting really makes sense, but…
If Google is really pure and concerned about the search result not being spammed by websites with low content, why is their site boutiques.com ranking #1 on a lot of high ranking keywords.
Strong content, unique content? Don’t think so…
January 28th, 2011 at 10:12 am
@ Mike –
***“i think this is a good thing, thin affiliate sites don’t really and haven’t really ever added value to a merchant.”
Nonsense. Does a merchant want more sales or does it want affiliates to add value in some non-defined way? Many affiliate sites that may be considered thin provide good traffic and sales to merchants through good landing page and user funneling techniques.
“this forces affiliates to think beyond cookie stuffing or cookie napping and actually add value to the users experience.”
Good job not all affiliates are up to cookie stuffing and cookie napping isn’t it. We wouldn’t want to give the industry a bad name would we?***
speaking from an agency point of view, merchants want affiliates to generate sale AND add value in some non-defined way, i.e. brand. you’re right that many thin affiliate sites do provide good traffic and sales, but thats not the whole picture, merchants want it all (crazy i know) they want huge ammounts of traffic that don’t need incentive and are able to push specific products to niche audiences…i guess merchants aren’t as clued up to how the interweb works.
my point is that if a thin site simply acts as an intermediary landing page and all you have on that site is easy content units and lots of keyword stuffed spammy articles, its’ going to make sales, but it’s not going to help ‘sell’ a particular merchant and therefore it doesn’t really add value to the merchant, a merchant would simply argue that customer would have come to them anyways, and the affiliate site was simply an inturruption in that jouney.
I realise this isn’t always the case and i have the greated respect for ‘decent’ affiliates, but merchants are getting smarter and are always questioning the value affiliate bring.
its not as simple as simply bringing in sales. thats only half the equation, in some cases, where those sales are from matters more.
January 28th, 2011 at 10:48 am
@kcheung
Thanks for your reply. I can understand that most agencies are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to managing merchant expectations, but by the same token it is up to agencies to define what should be expected from affiliate marketing and what shouldn’t.
My opinion from being involved in the industry for over ten years is that if a merchant becomes involved in the space with a view to making sales and having very defined brand expectations, perhaps affiliate marketing isn’t for them. Perhaps they should focus more on paid advertising where they can have specific sites of their choosing advertising them and also have a say on placement on their sites.
The earning commission and pushing brand aspects of affiliate marketing working in tandem is an increasing problem I am having that is perpetuated by agencies. I think that earning commissions is the job of affiliates and not to push brand, but often I have agencies basically ordering me to change affiliate ad placement, change text, etc on my sites. Due to the fact that I have an affiliate agreement with the merchant some agencies seem to think that it gives them carte blanche to order the affiliate base to promote their client as if the agency or merchant owned the affiliate websites themselves. In this case what option do we as affiliates have? Tell the agency to get stuffed – we own the sites and we will push the merchants how we think is best and run the risk of getting kicked off the program, or allow agencies to dictate (exactly) how we promote their clients in the name of brand promotion and brand protection meaning that we don’t effectively have full control of our own sites.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that “it takes all sorts” – some big some small, but all striving to make commissions in their own way.
In my opinion merchants/agencies can’t have it all.
BTW – I’m not aiming criticism at you kcheung in this semi rant, it is more an opinion of the scene in general.
February 1st, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Very interesting that your site got hit Kirsty, I thought that you used custom descriptions etc on there? Maybe there is more to it than that (I am still learning), but I thought that would have kept it from being duplicate content?
I have also seen one of my sites hit so am going to run some experiments on there, I’ll let you know the findings, but intuition tells me what the problem is.
February 1st, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Hi Kirsty.
Loved this blog post. – An interesting development indeed! But I like that you are taking the positive from it. I think that is a key learning as if you give visitors a real reason to use your site, then they have a better chance of returning to you again and again as they learn to trust and enjoy what you have to offer. Affiliates can do well out of considering their own customer journey and incorporating some of the retention tactics that are used brand side to build a longer term relationship, and adding value through your content seems key in this.
I’m familiar with your lingerie site from when we spoke while I worked at BeCheeky a few years ago. I wondered if you might be able to add more value by incorporating some price comparison features? I know that some of the brands/products you feature are available at different merchants – sometimes at different prices. Drawing a vistor’s attention to the best place to get the product at might be a way of adding value / giving them a reason to use your site over going direct to the merchant. What do you think? Or you could do more of a comparision of similar bra styles at different prices – ie find a designer inspired bra, and then recommend look a likes at other price points so that they can get tips on getting the look for less? Perhpas this could be a weekly feature? Or you could even explore some seasonal features on bra/lingerie styles for different occassions – ie racer back styles for summer months, strapless / multiway and shapewear for Summer Weddings / or Christmas parties etc. Or perhaps some gift buying guides might be good for valentines?
If one considers google as the ultimate site reviewer – then it makes sense that it would give less priority to any which it thinks fail to add significant value to the user, and more to a site which it sees people returning to again and again, and can see a relationship between that site, and a conversion on a merchant’s site. Google is still used for many merchant’s analytics, and I would expect many affiliate sites too, so I would imagine it has quite a good sense from these two bits of information to understand which affiliates are adding genuine value, and those who may be getting lots of visits, and pinging people off to merchants, but who perhaps result in high drop out rates if there is a mismatch of expectations (ie if false codes are presented or something)… who knows, but I like the approach you are going for as it’s one which favours the user experience and that is always going to be something that I imagine Google will consider important.
February 3rd, 2011 at 1:48 pm
A few years ago my main website got wiped out by Google overnight and I went from hardly working at all but earning so good money, to suddenly not earning and not knowing what to do about it.
This type of update is always going to go on and webmasters will suffer. In one respect it is good, as it wipes out many low quality sites. That is good for regular Google users looking for information, and equally good for high quality sites competing for those all important top rankings.
The problem is genuine collateral damage. My site was liked by users and – IMHO dat least – extremely high quality.
The lesson is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Once you have one successful site, go and create another; and another; and another.
February 6th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Hi Kirsty! This whole thing is why I decided to take a completely different approach to making money online. I had been building up affiliate sites that were “low content” and “shallow”. And that whole process was two steps forward, one step back. Or sometimes three steps back. Or even ten! I realized that this all might work better if I started a site that really would stand on its own as a source of content that my target audience would think important. Once I got a base of traffic, readers, etc, only then would I start monetizing. Some of which will be affiliate products. So, unfortunately, I think this is just the direction things are going. It’s really not necessarily a bad thing, though. For people who are passionate and creative, this could be a real boost. For those who just want a repeatable, cookie-cutter approach, however, this could be the kiss of death. As always a really interesting post!
February 8th, 2011 at 10:07 am
[...] my last post about how affiliates need to lift their game I didn’t mention that one of my own sites had been affected by the rumblings from the Google [...]
February 14th, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Hi Kirsty – I was reading the case you highlighted and thought it was about me. I like this post and agree if we are all better than the merchant we will be streets ahead and hopefully sitting higher in the natural results.
Thanks for highlighting – 2011 the year that we beat the merchant..
February 17th, 2011 at 7:32 am
Kim!! So sorry, your comment got buried within my spam and I’ve only just found it – better late than never though
I’d like to avoid price comparison (for now) because I’m not at all sure that many of the brands we cover have enough merchants to do this effectively – although the idea about comparing prices of similar lingerie types is an interesting one.
I think I can add value through some extra content – i.e. genuine news and reviews. Also discount codes, how to guides etc. Beyond that – giving some really clever feed content with filtering options beyond what you usually see on a merchant site is probably what I’m going to go for.
I’ll also need to balance this with some other serious quality signals and with a close eye on Duplicate content from the feeds – another thing Google is targeting right now.
It’s going to be a fine line to tread, but I’m well up for it.