Money Posts to Info Posts Ratio to Avoid Google Penalty?

[illmasterj]

Ok I'm using my month's newbie question quota in one hit:

1. When creating an affiliate site to get organic search traffic, is it an issue if all of my content is "money articles" (best X for Y, guide to X, product name reviews)? Or do I need some sort of supporting content to get Google on side?
2. When using traffic leaking, do "money articles" change? Do you still leak to a best/guide/review articles, or is there a better strategy to follow there?

 

[Ryuzaki]

When creating an affiliate site to get organic search traffic, is it an issue if all of my content is "money articles" (best X for Y, guide to X, product name reviews)? Or do I need some sort of supporting content to get Google on side?

We talked about this a lot in the Google Fred thread. Google did seem to be cracking down on sites made with a pure "commercial affiliate" intent. The problem is that they targeted many variables. There seemed to be a high correlation of sites that took a hit that only focused on "money pages," however there were many that did that that did not get hit too. The ones that slipped through were likely already validated by links, age, etc. and/or didn't commit enough of the other sins to trip the radar.

Looking at this from another direction, there's no better way to rank pages than to get contextual links from related pages with targeted anchor texts. You can pull that off on your own site too. I always create supporting pages and arrange them into what I call "relevancy nets."

When using traffic leaking, do "money articles" change? Do you still leak to a best/guide/review articles, or is there a better strategy to follow there?

Yes, it changes. If you want huge success with traffic leaking, you don't match platforms to your content. You match your content to the platform, which allows you to use copywriting, exploit emotional triggers, take advantage of the psychological mind-state of the users of the platform you're targeting, etc. Otherwise you might get a tiny bit of traffic. If you do it right, you can get half a million hits in a day or more.

 

[vbestic]

@jjj_

Ok I'm using my month's newbie question quota in one hit:

1. When creating an affiliate site to get organic search traffic, is it an issue if all of my content is "money articles" (best X for Y, guide to X, product name reviews)? Or do I need some sort of supporting content to get Google on side?

I don't think you should stress about the ratio of money pages vs informational pages. Google doesn't have anything against affiliate money pages as long as the money page itself adds value and doesn't look like it's just made to get that affiliate click.

The following quoted paragraphs were taken from official Google support thread on affiliate programs. I've added my interpretation bellow each quote.

Our Webmaster Guidelines advise you to create websites with original content that adds value for users. This is particularly important for sites that participate in affiliate programs

My interpretation of this is that Google has more strict thin content triggers if you're affiliate.

Not every site that participates in an affiliate program is a thin affiliate. Good affiliates add value, for example by offering original product reviews, ratings, navigation of products or categories, and product comparisons.

However, they don't have anything against affiliates as long as they add value to users. By value I don't mean 1k, 2k, 5k, or 165k words of content. I mean actual helping people.

Affiliate program content should form only a minor part of the content of your site if the content adds no additional features.

If you don't add actual value with affiliate content, it doesn't matter if you have 1:0, 1:1 or 1:45 review to informational content ratio.

More actionable tips from Google itself:

• Ask yourself why a user would want to visit your site first rather than visiting the original merchant directly. Make sure your site adds substantial value beyond simply republishing content available from the original merchant.
• When selecting an affiliate program, choose a product category appropriate for your intended audience. The more targeted the affiliate program is to your site's content, the more value it will add and the more likely you will be to rank better in Google search results and make money from the program. For example, a well-maintained site about hiking in the Alps could consider an affiliate partnership with a supplier who sells hiking books rather than office supplies.
• Use your website to build community among your users. This will help build a loyal readership, and can also create a source of information on the subject you are writing about. For example, discussion forums, user reviews, and blogs all offer unique content and provide value to users.
• Keep your content updated and relevant. Fresh, on-topic information increases the likelihood that your content will be crawled by Googlebot and clicked on by users.

Some actionable steps you can take:

• Update money pages quarterly (add/remove products, change your top 10 table rankings, more info content etc.)
• Add user ratings option to build a community
• Focus on one niche & dominate it
• Set up events like "table viewed", "product viewed", 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% scroll events in Google Analytics.
• A/B test article introductions, layouts, etc. for better engagement on those events
• Survey visitors with onpage surveys and react to changes.
• Always have a floating "feedback" button on the right.
• Add "why you can trust us" mini section (how many products you considered, how many hours of research, how many experts interviewed etc.)
• Use heatmaps to see how people scroll & click
• Watch visitor recordings to see how people engage with content.

Have in mind that value doesn't mean 1k, 2k, 5k or 156k words of content that were paid x or y dollars. Value is actual help to people and demonstration of expert view and deep understanding of topic/problem.

For example, you've asked

When creating an affiliate site to get organic search traffic, is it an issue if all of my content is "money articles" (best X for Y, guide to X, product name reviews)? Or do I need some sort of supporting content to get Google on side?

My reply contained a lot of content I copy pasted from Google webmaster guideliness but I've also (hopefully) added value by adding my intrepretation of it along with actionable steps you can take.

On the other hand, what do you think would happen if you've tasked your writer to answer your question in 1,000 words by the end of the week. I bet you'd realize she's not really an expert on the topic.

Of course, not all topics require such level of expertise as talking about SEO. However, people often realize when the content is filler fluffy. Maybe not all of them. Some of them will end up reading your article and clicking on Amazon links but what about 70% that bounced off your article?