This is a guest contribution from Jignesh Gohel.
Google Adwords has been the most popular tool for online advertising. It is easy enough to set, optimize and start reaping the profits. However, a few know that it can be a highly relevant tool for bloggers too. Many popular blogs are already using Google Adwords to popularize and monetize the sites. While you might already be using other advertisement platforms, Google Adwords opens new ways to rise to the top.
Adwords, as such integrates several different methods for advertising. Trying to get deeper, you can actually be astonished by the largely unnoticed tools that were right there in front of you all this time. Things like advertising on keywords with paid search, advertising on display networks including local news websites or YouTube, etc can be quite fulfilling. Remarketing is another way that Google Adwords leverages the power of paid searches and is considered the highest ROI variant of online advertising. While many bloggers believe that only organic content is the best way to get to the top, paid search too can lend a helping hand. Promoting your content with paid search marketing provides additional opportunity in content marketing. Google Adwords allows bloggers to create ads and generate paid traffic for blog, but with some underlying constraints. Google adwords has pre-defined policy and strict monitoring system which reject or even ban the advertisers who violate their policies. Here are few important policies for bloggers or content marketers.
Google Adwords policies to drive traffic
As said earlier, Google Adwords presents a great platform for blog promotion but also integrates several important restrictive policies
1. Arbitrage
Among the most important Adwords policies, Arbitrage doesn’t allow promotion of blogs that have specifically been designed for the showcasing advertisements. This is line with Google’s favor for unique, original and useful content. Excessive advertising makes your blog unsuitable to advertise with Google Adwords and in some cases; the account can even be suspended. If your blog or websites is primarily focusing on following types of content, it may come under radar of “arbitrage” policy.
- Websites designed primarily for ads
- Websites showcasing interstitial ads (pop up ads)
- Websites with scraped content
- Pre-generated and template content
- Auto-generated and gibberish content
- Websites involving deceptive navigation, indistinguishable content or malicious ads
- Websites integrating ad keywords irrelevant to the core content
2. Bridge Page
Adwords doesn’t support websites/blogs with Bridge Pages. Also referred to as doorway pages, it means landing pages that automatically link up to a completely different site. This is the characteristics with most affiliate websites but aren’t Adwords compliant. As such, these are also the pages that offer the visitor with no/marginal content and are solely meant to redirect traffic.
3. Information Harvesting
Websites/blogs that involve content meant to collect personal information from visitors aren’t supported under Adwords. These would involve websites that offer “free gifts” in exchange for personal information or web pages harvesting sensitive information (bank account details, credit card numbers, etc) over unsecured connections.
If your website is not harvesting information but collect sensitive information from customer, you must install SSL certificate on your website. Google Adwords information harvesting policy strictly recommends that the information mentioned below should transmit over secure processing servers (https):
- Debit and credit card numbers
- Bank/investment account details/numbers
- Wire transfer numbers
- Checking account numbers
- Social security, pension, national identity, driver’s license, health care or Tax ID numbers
If you blog is running on HTTPS, it also had added advantages in Google organic search result. You can easily get FREE SSL certificate from startssl or ssl2buy that can easily installed on your server by following these simple steps.
Tips for bloggers to adhere to Google Adwords policies
The primary goal of Google remains the same – to provide unique, original and representative content to its users. Adwords, as such integrates the same policies to make the experience on the search engine more comfortable for users. Bloggers who plan to be successful with Google Adwords need to:
- Use original and unique content as opposed to scraped ones
- Stop using intestinal and excessive ads
- Stop using blogs solely for the purpose of advertising
- Create campaigns with content relevant keywords and format
- Avoid trying to harvest user/visitor information
- Understand and follow Google adword policies strictly
Creating good content is always half the battle won. It is more important to get it to people who would consider it benefitting. Content promotion strategies integrated into Google Adwords for bloggers can get you ahead of your competitors. As such, experienced content marketers spend as much on promotion as they would on trying to generate the likable, linkable and sharable asset. Google Adwords seems to be a relevant tool that every bloggers should try.
Jignesh Gohel is Founder & CEO of online business consulting agency OLBUZ specializing in eCommerce, products and small business marketing. In his minuscule spare time, Jignesh enjoys nature photography and yoga. You can follow him on Twitter or reach out to him via Linkedin.
