There are some landing page quality score myths or incorrect assumptions that often come up. Brad Geddes attempts to clear them up over at Search Engine Land. I highlighted one that I often hear which is “Google hates affiliates and affiliate landing pages can pull down your quality score”. Brad offers up a pretty good answer to that one and addresses 8 other myths.

9 Myths of Landing Page Quality Score

Myth 6: Google hates affiliates

“False. The question affiliates should ask themselves is: “Was the user’s search experience made better by visiting my page before going to the merchant’s page?”. If you review several services and show the benefits and features of each service so that a searcher can make a more informed decision – then you’ve helped the search process. If your page is just about a single product and every single link from that page just goes to the same merchant page, then you’ve not added to the search experience.

There are many exceptional affiliate sites that add to the search experience. Google does not hate affiliates. Google hates making the search process longer for the user.”

Here are the other myths that are covered in the article.

Myth 1: My keyword has to be on the landing page
Myth 2: Adding a privacy policy will increase my quality score
Myth 3: My site is in Flash, so I can never have a good quality score
Myth 4: My page is all images. Load times are lowering my quality score
Myth 5: Adding an ‘about us’ page will increase my quality score
Myth 7: Microsites and dedicated landing pages no longer work
Myth 8: If my site doesn’t have a high Pagerank, I can’t get a good quality score
Myth 9: If I only have manufacturer descriptions, I will never have a good landing page quality score

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