Ads on the front page and the Panda Update

Something unusual happened that I thought I would share with you all since many Affiliates may find themselves in this same position.

About a month and a half ago we (Blueclaw) had a client experiencing an abnormal ranking change from the first to the second page.

After first look I thought the site looked below par because of the amount of ad blocks and also their appearance. Besides 3 Adsense blocks meant to look like the content they had a couple AdBright and other ads on the front page of their site.

We removed the ads and immediately saw a regain in rankings, and eventually better rankings. This happened around 6 weeks ago and proves that even Adsense can affect you if you over do it.

These days potential players are savvy and new entrants even smarter so being able to gain their confidence should be at the top of your list. This is the number one thing that end user focus groups have said an overwhelming 45% is important to them.

I'm not going to name-and-shame any individual site, we all know a few (billion), but here's an example of a good casino affiliate site.

Google has also asked for a sampling of questions that one might ask themselves when they visit a site. The questions returned by the respondents included many elements directly connected to usability and trust - I call it the 222 rule; you have 2.22 seconds to get them.

So the takeaway here is; too many ads can affect your ranking and just like a first date, first impressions are everything.

There have also been reports from well respected colleagues stating that the more trust-type seals (McAfee, GPWA, VISA, etc) on your site the better. Be sure to actually link to them without a nofollow.(saying you endorse or approve of them).

And of course as always link (in the same way) out to;
Gamblers Anonymous: www.gamblersanonymous.org
GamCare (UK based): www.gamcare.org.uk