Just about all affiliates I would imagine, have or will eventually face the dreaded ‘google slap’ at some point and its one of the biggest headaches you will get in affiliate marketing as it can turn any of your campaigns on its head in an instant.
What is a ‘google slap’?
Well trust me when I say you won’t miss it when it happens…
One thing you learn fast as an affiliate is that google is like your best friend and your worst enemy all rolled into one.
Lets assume you have just set-up a new adwords campaign to your website or merchants site.
After some carefull thought you have set-up some ad groups and chosen your targeted keywords and set your bid amounts based on your projected target for that month – For arguements sake lets say your bid is set at 5p per click on your best performing keyword/s.
Now overtime of course to run your ppc campaign successfully you will continue to monitor your “return on investment” (ROI) to ensure you are actually making a profit – Along the way gathering as much feedback on keyword conversions and cost per sale and find the sweet spots to maximise your return ( in simple terms )
Example:
Lets assume you have had 1000 clicks on your keywords all at the set amount of 5p and you have had 40 sales in that time which have given you in return commissions totalling £120.
So.. Your cost = £50 in clicks and your profit is a very respectable £70 ……….. Happy Days ! 
In an ideal world of course you would from now on just leave every thing alone, simply top up your adwords credit and have yourself a nice money making machine that required no maintenance.
Unfortunately lifes not that straight forward and that includes your new psychophrenic friend.
BEWARE! At any time google may make your keywords inactive by raising the minimum bid requirements for your precious keywords at any time.
The minimum bid required could now be set to anything…
Sometimes it may be 10p or 25p or even 50p – In fact just about anything google wants.
OUCH! YOU HAVE BEEN SLAPPED!
The Effects of a slap:
The first thing you will probably notice is that the traffic you have been sending has dropped dramatically – In fact it might have just about dried up all together if its on some of your best performing keywords ( and sods law dictates it probably will be )
This of course in turn means fewer sales and a big drop in profits for you ( Not such happy Days! 
)
So.. What to do next
The most important thing at this point is not too panic
Don’t just simply increase your bids to the required amounts to satisfy your hunger for site visitors – Thats the worst thing you can do.
Battle Stations: – Here’s how I try and combat a google adwords slap..Don’t panic – as above - I sit down and first try and figure out the reasons behind it.
The most important thing most people fail to realise – and I can’t stress this enough is that 9 times out of 10 increasing your bid/s is not the answer! This will probably just make your situation a whole lot worse. Chances are that a few days down the line your going to get slapped even harder and it will cost you big time.
The main reason why google will increase your minimum bid is probably because your keyword quality score (QS) has dropped so by just feeding more money in is not going to help your situation.
You need to improve the quality or it will keep dropping further regardless.
Improving your keyword quality score:
There are a few ways you may be able to improve your score.
1. Ensure your keywords are highly targeted
2. Improve the quality of your ads by ensuring you grab the users eye and increase your click through ratio (CTR) – Its a good idea to have a few ads running in each ad group so you can guage which perform the best.
I tend to have 3 or 4 going at once and then continue to edit the lowest performer. This keeps things moving in the right direction.
Its worth making a note that it may help to simply switch the poor ones off.
Don’t worry too much on the click through ratio for your content ads – Its generally a miss conception that a low CTR for your content ads will effect your quality scores – I’ve heard it said so many times by other advertisers and its simply not true.
Crunching the numbers:
Its only worth conscidering increasing your bids once you are happy you have improved your chances of a better CTR. Otherwise the downward spiral of your campaign is likely to continue.
Of course its only wise to increase your bids if its going to still be profitable.
Making money with PPC isn’t rocket science – If more money is coming out than you are putting in then your winning – Its that simple.
You must do the maths to ensure you can afford to increase your bid amounts.
Back to the example above – If you had to increase your bids to just 10p you can see because it will double your cost you won’t have too much profit left. Any more than this and you will soon be making a loss assuming the trend would continue.
Other things worth doing..
If your a PPC affiliate its good pratice to have multiple campaigns – Work your way up and get yourelf in the position of not being destroyed if one campaign goes bad.
Don’t be afraid to stop/pause your campaign for a while.
Its worth looking out for other reasons why your bid price has inflated…
Sometimes increased competition for your words may be the reason behind the ’slap’ – This may even vary throughout the day – I have noticed certain words fluctuating as certain competitors may only bid at peak times for example so there are still windows of opportunity which can be grabbed by using the ad scheduling function.
Google Doesn’t hate you:
Don’t fall out with the ‘big boy’ – google doesn’t hate you.
All google wants is the best results for its users so they keep coming back for more. ( so keep improving )
They aren’t trying to destroy your campaign as they want you to keep pumping the money in.
Having said that I wouldn’t say that they don’t try and push their luck a little.
Remember google needs to keep trying to inflate keyword prices – Some people think that google slaps are systematically activated to do just this.
The PPC Fairies:
I must say I’m not entirely convinced on this theory myself and one thing I have noticed is that sometimes doing nothing at all is the answer - Whilst I’m not paying so much on my ppc bill for a while I can concentrate on other things and use my budget elsewhere.
Usually over time the PPC fairies pay a visit and put things back as they should be.
I think they must have just flew away on holiday as one of my campaigns has been on pause for 2 weeks and still ‘no cigar’
Time to go to bed now lol – its been a long day but thanks for reading
Mike
Filed under: PPC Advertising | Tagged: adwords, ppc, PPC Advertising
Mike JDS