Top 10 Ways to Avoid Rejection

Top 10 Ways to Avoid Rejection

According to Overture, about 30% of all listings submitted to them are rejected. Ouch! That's a big percentage. Although search engines' editorial policies differ on a few minor points here and there, they all generally require advertisers to adhere to the same rules. If you follow these top 10 guidelines, then your listing acceptance rate may be a perfect 100% every time.

1. No excessive capitalization: FREE, MYSITE.COM.

2. No superlatives: #1, best, largest.

3. No phone numbers or URLs in titles or descriptions.

4. Don't use symbols (&); use words instead (and).

5. Avoid exclamation points (!).

6. Avoid having pop-ups on the landing page.

7. The keyword should be mentioned once in the title or description and at least once on the landing page.

8. Content should be relevant: Product names , special, or "free" offers mentioned in the title or description must be discussed on the landing page.

9. Affiliate sites must note that they are affiliates in their title or description.

10. The links to your site must allow people to return to the search engine by clicking on the "Back" button in the browser's toolbar.

Be sure to double-check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This sounds like a no-brainer, but when we're in a rush we often make simple mistakes. A minor oversight can cost you a few days of waiting, plus it makes your submissions open to scrutiny and possible rewriting by the editors. This isn't good ‚ you might be unhappy with their changes. Also, just to be safe, take an extra few minutes to test the destination URLs you assign to your listings. A broken link is absolute cause for rejection.

Really, it's not the end of the world if any of your listings are rejected; it just wastes time to go through the process again.

If you're going to launch a campaign on only one or two search engines, tailor your listings to those particular engines' policies. For example, Google allows advertisers to use an exclamation point in the description, so why not take this opportunity to make your listing as strong as possible?!

Editorial Guidelines

For the URLs of the editorial guidelines, visit www.searchenginesales.com.