Why not just send the customer right to the merchant product page? There are several reasons.
Google Adwords does not allow landing pages (the page where the customer will land when they
click on the URL) to contain pop-ups or pop-unders. Most merchant pages are highly ‘tricked
out’ with some sort of pop-up or floating ad.
By sending the customer to your page first, you get a chance to capture customer information,
pre-sell the product (a very effective practice) and establish your web page. If you have no
experience with websites, don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be hard.
Google Adwords Rules and Regulations
Adwords’ rules and regulations can and do change. Google provides a free guide to help you get started, along with information online and the Adwords Blog. When it comes to landing pages, Google Adwords expects a link that works. (Seems like a no-
brainer but they obviously had to put it in writing.)
Once a viewer clicks on your ad, the promoted product should not be more than 3 clicks away.
The landing page cannot contain pop-ups or pop-unders. Clicking on the back arrow at any time
must return the user to Google.
The landing page is a vital part of pay-per-click marketing. If you send viewers directly to the
Clickbank merchant’s page, you’re required to show yourself as an affiliate. Google allows two
affiliate links per merchant per page. Two. If you aren’t one of the top two producing pay per
click affiliate marketers for the product, don’t bother writing ads.
URL’s featuring affiliate links or long URLs do not look professional and this can reduce
clickability. Example: Promoting the tattoo site with the Clickbank link would look something
like this – http://tattoo.hop.clickbank.com/7634. Some merchant affiliate links are quite lengthy.
Example: http://greattattoo.com/angel/user/bebop/site2/3658720-90.
These are fictional examples but they illustrate the problem. One solution to affiliate links? Go to
www.tinyurl.com and shorten the link. This is a popular solution. So popular that the words tiny URL look almost generic. Tinyurl.com also offers what they call the preview version, meant
to instill more customer confidence. This version just adds the world ‘preview’ to the newly
created URL.
You can also download profit protector and use it to create redirects. Since this does require FTP
experience, you might prefer to use URL freeze. It’s free and doesn’t involve any uploading of
The best solution to the URL issue is to get your own domain name. Use your keywords.
Example: We’ll pretend that qualitytattoo.com is available and use it for the exercises we’re
doing.
