What is a Google Slap and How Does it Affect Your Business?

Can a Google Slap hurt your business?

Recently, one of my newest clients in a very competitive industry found his pay-per-click rates had literally doubled overnight.  Nothing had changed with his site or his keywords - but now he was paying twice as much to get people to his website.

Unfortunately, he and others in his industry had found themselves “Google slapped”.  A “Google slap” happens when too many sites are competing for the same keywords all based around the same subject. A recent example of this is the “Water for Gas” sites.  With gas prices rising, who wouldn’t want to run their car solely on water? 

Lots of people…in fact, far too many for Google’s liking.  So it slapped a penalty on the Water for Gas advertisers and affiliates by forcing them to pay more in order to have their ads shown across its network.

Can your site be Google slapped, and if so, how can you stop it or prevent it from happening? 

Relax…If you’re a small business owner selling your own products or services on the web - you’re not in any danger of being slapped.  The same thing goes if you’re in an ultra-competitive area like insurance or real estate.  Just because the competition is fierce doesn’t automatically mean that Google is setting their sights on your site next.

Google only starts slapping when a particular area suddenly becomes incredibly popular, and piles of pay-per-click ads start cropping up by the hundreds or thousands.  They also get slap-happy when you put up lots of sites covered in ads just to make a few bucks. 

Remember, the best way to make any search engine happy is to keep stocking your site with relevant, helpful content that can’t be found on other websites.

Can you prevent a Google slap?

No one can prevent a slap from happening, since no one but Google’s software engineers can make the changes that cause the plummeting conversions and higher prices in the first place.  But there are a few steps you can take to help ensure that your site and ads don’t crumble:

• Google is really good at sniffing out sites designed to clog up the web with poor quality content and ads plastered everywhere. Avoid the lure of sites designed purely to help you “make money with Google Adsense”.  They’re useless.

• Find alternate ways of promoting heavily competitive niches and affiliate programs.  In the “Water for Gas” example, you could use free traffic generation through writing articles, posting on forums and social networking to help spread the word about your site.  It doesn’t cost you a thing except some time and effort (which is more than most affiliate marketers will put in to any one site!)

• Stay in the market for the “long haul”.  Many extremely competitive subjects have affiliates who jump ship as soon as they see their ad costs double and their rankings slip. 

If you stay the course over time, you’ll not only have the benefit of less competition, but the fact that you keep adding fresh content tells the search engines that you really mean business and not just a quick buck!

Recommended Tools and Resources

• Add Audio to Your Website
• Wordpress Tutorials