Super Affiliate Q & A - PPC Domain Strategy
… ASK the SUPER Affiliates!
Questions sometimes come up that a PPC super affiliate who has been in the trenches could answer much better than I. So I’m going to try an experiment here. Let’s see if it will work out as well as I hope.
Following is a question about PPC affiliate domain strategy and how to get started doing PPC. I’m going to put it out to the PPC Super Affiliate blogosphere and see if we can get some of the PROS to answer the question. I’ll do a shout out to 4 PPC super affiliates and see if they will write-up the Q & A on their blog. (Super Affiliates, scroll down to see if you are one of the ones I’m calling on to weigh in with your expertise.)
AFFILIATE PPC QUESTION
“I want to start doing affiliate PPC and I’m not sure what categories the offers I end up deciding to run will be. I want to use landing pages on my own domain(s) as opposed to direct-linking. It seems setting up a different domain for each category of offers may be more trouble than it’s worth, especially since I don’t know yet which offers are going to pan out or if I’ll focus enough on a certain category of offers enough to even bother building out a domain.
In light of the fact that G seems to prefer a built-out domain with about us page, privacy policy, some content, some age, some backlinks, yada, yada - you can’t just throw up a landing page on a virgin domain any more and expect it to fly, right?
So here’s the LEAD UP TO THE QUESTION. Lets say I THINK I’m going to want to focus primarily on health offers, PPL loan offers and travel offers. Let’s also pretend I have 4 domains.
1) One really good generic domain that could be used for anything, but would not sound targeted at all to a specific market. Example: LimelightMarketing.com (note: none of these domains are mine, just examples)
2) Three category specific domains like 4goodhealth.com, 4lowrates.com and 4traveldeals.com
THE BIG Q: Would it be a mistake at least for starters to put all my energy into building up content and building out LimelightMarketing.com? I could have a separate subdomain about health, loans and travel.
Then as I choose offers to run, just put the landing page on that main domain in the appropriate section. So my landing pages may be something like hoodia.LimelightMarketing.com or autoloans.LimelightMarketing.com
Since at this point I’m not really sure WHAT types of offers I’ll end up deciding to run it seems like a waste to build out separate sites. It seems to be that putting all my energy into building up one good authority site would be better than having to build out a new site for each type of offer I may end up wanting to run.
So again, the question is, will it matter to G or hurt conversions much if the landing page is on a very nice sounding BUT generic domain?
I’m not all that good or fast at building out complete new sites. Once a site is up its fairly easy for me to write articles or design landing pages though. So just putting everything on LimelightMarketing seems easiest and with separate content sections, I think it may work. But I’m afraid putting unrelated offers all on one domain could hurt me.
I’ve been stuck at step 0 for a long time, just trying to decide on the best way to get started. I feel like if I could just figure out this 1st step I can get unstuck and finally start DOING something, instead of just thinking about it. Hope you can help!”
I’m going to give a special shout out to Amit at Super Affiliate Mindset, Paul at Uber Affiliate, Geordie at the RevenueWire PPC Super Affiliate Blog and Chad at CDF Networks.
Hey guys, knowing everything you know today (pretend you are brand new and in this affiliate’s shoes.) Would using the generic domain for all types of landing pages be a BAD move?
What would your domain strategy be and why???
(Paul, Amit, Geordie and Chad - I often struggle to find ideas for something to blog about, and I’m sure you do too. Answering questions is a great way to generate content and provide value to your readers. I think this Q & A could help your readers as well as mine. Hope you can take the time to offer your expertise. Be sure to leave a trackback - so our 5 Star readers can follow the trail to your blog to read your answers.)
5 Star readers - Check back for more on this later in the week. These guys are busy, but I think I can get at least a couple to weigh in. Just may take a couple days for them to have time.
Anyone else have an opinion on this? Feel free to either reply in comments or link to this question and answer it on your blog - leaving a trackback - so our 5 Star readers can follow the breadcrumb to your blog to read your answers.
#1 Chad Frederiksen wrote on Monday, January 28th, 2008:
This is a great question and a topic I have blogged about several times. Personally I buy domains for each and every offer I promote. The reason it’s so important, is because with a text ad you only have 3 or 4 lines of real estate to get your message across. Having a domain and therefore a display URL that accurately reflects the offer, and even has the keywords in the URL will usually lead to a better CTR and higher customer confindence. For sucessfull offers I have bought 5-10 domains just to test their effectiveness for CTR and ultimately conversions. So to answer your question, yes I think buying a generic domain is not a good move.
#2 Linda Buquet wrote on Monday, January 28th, 2008:
Hey Chad, thanks SO much for taking the time to weigh in. Had a feeling that was going to be the answer.
Read your blog often but must have missed those posts. I thought this was a good question because I’d never seen any blogs cover it. Will have to go search your site or feel free to drop the links here if you have a chance.
#3 Geordie wrote on Monday, January 28th, 2008:
Thanks for a chance to provide some input Linda, I’ve posted my thoughts on the blog at http://blog.revenuewire.com
#4 Linda Buquet wrote on Monday, January 28th, 2008:
Geordie, thanks so much for taking the time to answer. I know you are on the road and super busy right now, so really appreciate it!
Great answers and excellent feedback. Here’s a link to the direct post so people that read this a month from now don’t have to dig through RevenueWire to find it. Although if you have to dig through a blog to find something RevenueWire is a good place to be.
http://blog.revenuewire.com/?p=196
I just got an email from Amit, so I think he’s going to be sharing his viewpoints on this too.
#5 Best Starting PPC Strategy - 5 Star Affiliate Forums wrote on Monday, January 28th, 2008:
Hey forum members - Some of the Super Affiliates I pinged are weighing in with some good feedback and ideas. See blog comments for more info.
#6 PPC Super Affiliate Domain Strategy… | Super Affiliate Mindset wrote on Monday, January 28th, 2008:
[…] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!A little while back Linda Buquet of 5 star affiliate forum asked me to address the question of domain strategy. […]