As Google says it will enforce new sitelink policy, content will be more core to campaigns

If a mail sent by Google to many AdWords customers today is any indication, content is going to become all the more determining a parameter in how the websites are ranked and also shown in search results.

For years, it has been a common practice by ad managers to map multiple keywords into a single URL, given the effectiveness of the approach in driving more traffic to a specific destination on a website.

The new Google email communication to AdWords customers means that campaign tactic would no longer work.

Google’s new policy enforcement change could “affect the performance of any AdWords campaign that uses sitelinks.” If you use sitelinks now, or plan to use sitelinks in the future, please continue reading to understand the changes and suggested steps you can take to avoid any negative impact to your campaigns,” the email has noted.

Google wants “each sitelink in a campaign to link to a different landing page URL with unique content on the landing page.”

Citing the trigger for the letter, Google said, “Recently, we’ve noticed an increase in the number of sitelinks created with the same landing pages or the same content. So in the coming month, we will begin more proactive enforcement of our existing policy. Initially, we’ll focus on new and recently changed sitelinks. As your ads are being served, our systems will verify that your sitelinks meet the policy standards. Sitelinks that don’t meet the standards will be restricted from appearing.”

Google acknowledged in the mail that manually checking and fixing duplicates for existing sitelinks and landing pages might take some time and coordination. So it would be delaying more proactive enforcement with existing sitelinks for a few months, it said.

This makes it more than clear that sites will need to have more unique content pages to be able to qualify for campaigns and even more content for the campaigns to be more successful than the competition.

To increase the chances of having more sitelinks shown with ads, Google recommended having 6-10 unique sitelinks in each campaign.