We are always working to improve the quality of the product data that we provide via our API and Wordpress plugins, and we're continually reviewing our publishers' websites that promote our merchants to ensure higher quality traffic and end-user experience.
It is very important that merchants to be happy with where their products and brands are appearing in our publisher network. We want to be proud of these websites and traffic, and we hope you do too.
Search engines have, for a long time, provided guidelines for webmasters to get their websites successfully listed in search engines. At Prosperent, our guidelines are not exactly the same because we aren't a search engine. But there are some similar goals, in that we want the users to have good experiences. We also want our merchants to feel good about the websites that their products are being promoted on. And we want to be proud of our publisher base.
There are some generally accepted definitions low quality websites in the Internet industry, that we use when we're evaluating websites in our network.
"Spammy" websites are those that are stuffed with keywords and automatically generated text for the purpose of ranking well in search engines. They tend to have random domain names, little regard for design, and are even misleading to look like an actual store, have fake reviews, and automatically generated descriptive text. Nobody likes to land on these websites when they are surfing the web, looking for something to research and buy. In other words, these websites are low quality.
"Thin Affiliate" websites are not necessarily spammy. They may be high design quality, have relevant products, and a good search experience, but are not much more than just products. Search engines generally don't want sites like this filling up their search results because it's basically listing search results in their search results. But since there are potentially other ways to get visitors to sites like that, and users may find it useful, we don't consider those sites bad. Though we don't find that they are very effective, or if they rank in search engines, they won't for very long.
For the past few months and going forward, we are reviewing websites and marking them with our own internal quality ratings, which will affect the ability for you to promote Prosperent merchants on those websites. We won't be blocking "Thin" websites entirely but merchants may choose not to work with those websites. Low quality websites, however, may find themselves blocked much more often.
To make sure that you continue to have access to our full list of merchants and their products, you should make sure your websites are of good quality. Never employ spammy techniques, and try to create a website that people would enjoy visiting. If you have what is generally considered a "thin" website, you should take steps to add the elements and content required to avoid that classification as well.
What can you to do improve site quality?
- Focus on content - Websites with nothing but affiliate products and ads on them are considered "Thin" websites. Having products and ads on a website is fine, but that should be paired up with something unique. Unless you have a unique and novel way to present products, you should be looking to add content to your website, and get it up front, not just on the side as a blog.
- Add value to the visitor - Does your website solve a problem, fulfill a need, and/or entertain? What problem are you solving for your visitors? "Showing them where to buy products" doesn't count for much.
- Make content and product listings relevant - If you've got a website about dog and cat toys, constrain the product results to just pet products. Don't leave it wide open so other types of products appear on your website.
- Capture your own customers with email - Don't just get visitors and send them away to buy something. Collect an email list and send them interesting email content. This also demonstrates that you take your website and online presence seriously.
- Use original content - not just scraped, and especially not spun content - Content development is not simply scraping it from other locations and mixing it up for the purpose of making your website unique. Create unique content that's also valuable.
- Curate content that complements - There is nothing wrong with finding useful content and including it on your website. This is called Content Curation. But the content that you include on your website from other sources should be relevant, interesting, and something that your visitors would want to read. Not just filler to fool search engines.
- Create a brand or personality - If it is clear that there is a business and real people behind a website, putting effort into it, it becomes clear that it is not automated and will therefore have value to somebody. Choose a good name for your website. Put some attention into the design, and spend time putting personal touches on it.
- Get a domain name - A relevant domain name goes a long way toward credibility of a website. If you have a generic or random looking domain name site, replicated with subdomains, that just screams automated.
HOW TO FIND OUT HOW YOUR WEBSITE WAS REVIEWED
In the Prosperent dashboard, under reports is an Excluded Merchants report.
This will tell you which merchants have excluded your website(s) and for what reason. This reason may be the type of website it is (profile) or it may be blocking your website specifically.
HOW TO GET YOUR WEBSITE RE-REVIEWED
If your website has been blocked by one or more merchants, and you have made changes that you feel would change your site's classification, please submit a support request here in the Prosperent interface.
Otherwise, we do re-review websites periodically to ensure that they haven't changed.
We want you to be successful, because we get paid when you get paid. If there's anything we can do to help provide guidance on your website, and what changes you might make to improve it, we'd be happy to help.
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