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Category: Affiliate Marketing

Do you work in affiliate marketing? Share the latest and get your questions answered.

  • lovealbatross


    Hi All, I know there was a recent post on this subject but I'm wondering if someone could take a look at these links and tell me if there is any SEO value in them at all and if not, what would be a way to improve them that might not be too much trouble for the affiliate? This URL: http://www.premiermodelskin.com/the-products/blemish-treatment has a Purchase button that passes product data (price, quantity, etc) directly to the basket of the host site (the site we want SEO benefit to). Using a form method to this URL: <form method="GET" action="<strong>http://www.monushop.co.uk/products/premier/blemish-treatment.html</strong>">                                                                                        Qty <select id="add" name="add">                          <option value="1" selected="selected">1</option>                          <option value="2">2</option>                          <option value="3">3</option>                          <option value="4">4</option>                          <option value="5">5</option>                          <option value="6">6</option>                          <option value="7">7</option>                         <option value="8">8</option>                         <option value="9">9</option>                         <option value="10">10</option>                      </select>                    15ml                    £16.25                                                                                       </form> My question is, does G see that form GET action as a followable link? If not what would be a better method? Any feedback much appreciated.
    Cheers
    J

    | lovealbatross
    0
  • jdeb


    I'm keen to hear feedback from anyone who has installed a directory onto their e-commerce site. By directory, I mean that - subject to human review and possibly a small fee - a relevant site owner in my niche can create a listing that is effectively a page on my site where they control the main content, links & images.
    People using our site would enter the directory section from our resources / advice top level category and browse the index of the directory to reach a listed site's dedicated page. The idea for it came up when we were discussing ways to get more backlinks. Offering people a whole page directory listing seems like a good way of negotiating a link in return that isn't just from the other site's link page. I'm looking for everyone's stories on this: your reasons for doing it, how you went about it and the tools you used and what your results where, in particular: was it worth it? We aren't thinking about starting a new site for the directory, it would be added onto our main site (which is old and has good PR etc etc). However, it would still be good to hear from both sides of the fence on that issue. Over to you. J

    | jdeb
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  • amirwebdeveloper


    I got an idea to social facebook application. anyone can give me a tips or tools or a book where i can get this answeres?: how to Find out if this niche has enough people that interested in this subject who Best Target Audience what Best Profit method (pay per month membership, AdSense, leads, etc...) What is the best market for this idea (country, languages, ages, gender, etc) where to Find who are the Competitors & Similar services / application and how to beat them a list of affiliate market for the related site niche? well. i dont even expect someone can answer me that quesitons in this post but give me please links, clues , book, lessons or company that do that

    | amirwebdeveloper
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  • 94501


    Hi, I have a client who sells consumer products and is interested in affiliate advertising. Of course, they can get set up with something like CJ.com. They are also interested in possibly using some third party software to take their affiliate effort in house and be able to offer publishers simple urls. The idea is that this might help the link profile for SEO as well. Here are my questions: Does anybody have any experience with the complication level associated with third-party software for link value path? So, relative pluses and minuses. Can anyone recommend an affiiate software that is reliable and easy to use? Any opinion on one big site to go with... CJ, GAN, someone else? Thanks!

    | 94501
    0
  • reallygoodstuff


    It's been years since I've had a discount I could offer over PPC. I remember when I was a young search monkey, that companies would offer the coupon code directly in the ad copy. However, an inspection of ads on various queries, I don't see anyone doing this. I want to, because of course a concrete offer should certainly help CTR right?  But, not finding any referent examples of other companies using the coupon code freaks me out. Is there a drawback to posting the code directly?

    | reallygoodstuff
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  • reallygoodstuff


    Haven't worked with discount codes in years. Researching the ad copy I found very few sites putting the promo code directly in the ad copy. I thought this was a standard practice for increasing response. Do you know why companies with active promo codes don't use them in Adwords copy?

    | reallygoodstuff
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  • speedyseo


    I have to promote an affiliate scheme, and am drawing up a list of techniques that I can use to get people interested and sign up to it. Currently I have: Promoting the scheme in any article promotion. Identifying relevant websites to the scheme, and contacting them directly. Networking in affiliate forums and communities. Promoting on Facebook and Twitter. Possibly producing a video reviewing the scheme and posting it onto YouTube and other video sites. Can anyone think of any other techniques that I could try using? Cheers.

    | speedyseo
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  • Martin_S


    Afternoon Mozzers, We run a basic affiliate program whereby we distribute banners and tools to affiliate sites who then link back to our homepage via these, often through a tool that incorporates an HTML link with our primary keyword term embedded. This banner/tool/link heads to our homepage, and will then incorporate that particular affiliate's unique code in the URL, eg. www.example.com/1A-265-GNH Seems pretty standard practice so far? So, considering this, that we include our primary keyword term in HTML in some banners, some also link to our homepage via an embedded image (and others then just work off cookies as per usual), can anyone hazard a guess, or know for certain, the beneficence of this as a link building means? I ask in terms of trying to determine whether to continue punting our tools and banners as a decent link building opportunity, or concentrate more on other link building means. Hope I've been clear enough, but am happy to elaborate if need be. Cheers

    | Martin_S
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  • philraymond


    I'm setting up an affiliate program through 1shoppingcart. Even though I run 3 different websites, the way their program works is that I have to have 1 domain name that my affiliates get as their affiliate link, with their unique id attached at the end. I can give them multiple links that will redirect to various places on my 3 websites, but those original links that they put on their site will all be to just 1 domain. I'm wondering if I still get link juice to my sites even though the links are obviously being redirected? Does it depend on the redirection method? I was just thinking that getting hundreds of affiliates who run related sites could be a very good seo boost if they're all linking to my site, but I feel like it's going to be wasted because of this redirection thing. Hope this made sense. Thanks very much,
    Phil

    | philraymond
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  • inhouseseo


    What portion of online sales are generated via organic results as opposed to other means? I am wondering if there are any stats as far as what portion of sales we should be looking to get from ppc, affiliates, email marketing etc. Thanks

    | inhouseseo
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  • mwoody


    Hi, I was looking over some mobile phone deals today and after search for Blackberry Torch Deals in Google UK I came across this site - http://www.phoneslimited.co.uk/Blackberry/9800+Torch.html When I hit the page I was amazed it was ranking #1 because it literally just lists affiliate link after affiliate link. The page has next to no unique content and keyword density is non existent. In fact, the whole on page seo is just whack. So why does it rank so well?  The site seems to rank well for a variety of similar keywords? I think we could learn a lot breaking it down

    | mwoody
    0
  • Truso


    Hey All, I'm new to all this and I'm aready getting overwhelmed with the content at seomoz. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what to concentrate on first for immediate gratification?

    | Truso
    0
  • getbigyadig


    Yesterday, June 9th, I wokeup and ran my rank checking software. My two domains that I have page one number one rankings for are solid as they have been for the last year. Before I went to sleep last night I ran the rank check again, and had lost all rankings. After researching into it more, I realized my entire domain name is deindexed.  The site: search yields no results at all. The domain name has links from over 250 root domain names, is highly focused on one product and one keyword. The links come mostly from articles, comments, forum posts, press releases, and 3-4 articles that were posted talking about my website by other bloggers. The site has 60 pages, which I think (thought) was more than enough for such a tight focus. The domain is a good keyword match name that I paid a grand for. In webmaster tools it says my URLs are still indexed, however thats not the case. I tried searching in Bing, and Yahoo. Bing - DeIndexed.  Yahoo - One page of the site indexed. I havent done anything black hat at all, which is ironic this domain was banned because its the only domain name links were built to using a respectable seo company. It runs on wordpress, and I had not added any new content in about 4 months. PR4, and the PR still exists in the toolbar and on the websites I used to check it.  Also tried searching google.fr, google.ru, etc... to see if it was a complete deindex, and it is.  Then used the multiple datacenter check - which told me my domain name was not listed in any of the DCs checked. It is an affiliate website, with one affiliate link on the homepage. I use a plugin to mask the link so it appears as  /starthere/  rather than a long affiliate URL. There is ONE catch, this website is in the pharmacy niche. Now before you all go saying oh well thats why, consider my question. I dont sell anything illegal, nor does the affiliate program I promote. I collect traffic from people searching for a prescription drug and then recommend a herbal alternative. Something odd however, is that I have 5 websites like this. Each tailored to their respective prescription drug backlink wise, and then on site I have comparisons and explain the benefits of instead using one of the herbal products or OTC supplements from savon/walgreens whatever. The other 4 websites gained rank, pages 1, 2, and 3 for their keywords when they were previously on pages 15-20. No new link building to the other domains, I hadn't given them any focus due to other projects. The issue is the domain name which was banned was a real money maker with an aesthetically pleasing theme. Now its completely deindexed, and I dont know why. Despite the fact I am lost an income stream, I really would like to know why this occurred at all. I feel like I walked into my job, was fired and not told why. This isn't the first time this has happened to me, however previously it was my own fault because I used an affiliate template and it didn't occur to me 5k other people were doing the same thing.  (earlier days before I learned more about link building and basic SEO). So, my question is what exactly happened yesterday? Did anyone else see an sudden change in traffic or rankings?  Has anyone else experienced a complete deindex of their domain name, and if you have is this permanent or is google known for accidental / temporary removals during an update to their algo? I may share my link if it will help, however I prefer not to unless its in private. Also if someone has access to Matt Cutts directly so I can ask what I am doing wrong, or has any idea how to contact someone at google (other than a request for reinclusion) I am all ears. Its very frustrating to see a decision made to ban my domain name without so much as an email saying "we dont like you". All responses and opinions are welcome and appreciated!

    | getbigyadig
    0
  • sophycolbert


    Hello, Our site has a very high bounce rate, which in part is down to a slightly old fashioned design, and also because we are a retailer and I imagine many visitors are simply quickly comparing prices and then leaving. However, having had a look in Google Analytics, I think that there is another issue that is contributing to a very high bounce rate. When I look in Content > Top Content, and order the pages in order of Bounce Rate, high to low, there are hundreds of instances of pages with just one or two visits in the last month, and a 100% bounce rate.  The links are the same as our home page or pages on our website, but with extra letters and numbers at the end of the url. We have an affiliate scheme, which provides our affiliates with unique codes for the products they want to link to, and my guess is that these urls are getting indexed. I've looked at a few other links, and they go to translated versions of a page from our website, generated by Google. Other urls seem to have been generated by search results from our own search on the website. What worries me is that there are lots and lots of versions of the same page, with slightly different urls. I am by no means an SEO expert - I work for a very small company and am basically learning as I go - but I know that duplicate content is bad news. If the pages were on our own site, we could use 301s to redirect, but what about translated versions, or urls generated by affiliate schemes, or search results? Many thanks, Sophy

    | sophycolbert
    0
  • Tonyd23


    With the recent update from Google Panda would links from affiliate Coupon Sites now have an negative impact in Organic Rankings or site value? A reason for this question is because many Coupon Sites usually have poor content and a poor quality score. Thanks

    | Tonyd23
    0
  • JohnHillman


    We launched a new affiliate site at the beginning of April this year dealing in reviews, vouchers and price comparison for a niche product. We had a pretty good start, with some of our target keywords ranking #8 #10 #7 but this week they have suddenly dropped off dramatically - like 36 or 42 places. We haven't made any changes to the site apart from publishing new content pieces, such as news posts and reviews - does anyone know why this would suddenly happen? Thanks

    | JohnHillman
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  • semshah143


    Hi, We are running a sort of large affiliate website, with having 2000 web pages. We are having unique content, metas and related on every page. The problem we are facing is we are not gaining traffic constantly. We have some top rankings for sometimes few days, for few weeks and for few months. But suddenly we went few pages behind on serps, we loose all our ranking. After some time it will come again on serps as natural positions. Due to this after year of hard work on content, meta and many more small small issues, we are on the same no. of visitors. Given below are the my site traffic details with attached image. We used SEOMOZ Pro tools to evaluate all the possibilities and errors we are doing,  We found lots of bad things happening our site, We started work them on since early January and which achieved the corrections as per the image of crawl diagnosis summary page shown below : we are not having sitemap on our site and having some soft 404s, but we are working towards it. Is there any thing more specific we can do to this kind of problem.. 5AyHO.png yxkEr.png

    | semshah143
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  • JasonBrown65


    Hi, I have used a simple php redirect for one site that it used for an affiliate link. Always used it, cant remember the exact reason I did but most likely to make the url pretty 🙂 On the crawl stats of this domain it shows as a 302 redirect - does this have any issues? What do people recommend for affiliate links? Cloaking? Tracking? There are a number of wordpress plugins available that seem to be aimed at affiliate links, any recommendations? I assume that they will still be classed as 302's. Any advice gratefully received. Thanks Jason

    | JasonBrown65
    0
  • GriffinHansen


    My client just tasked me with helping create a great Amazon listing for their product. I know nothing about selling on Amazon. Which guides/books/tips should I check out?

    | GriffinHansen
    0
  • BarrettAhern


    After looking at Google Shopping results, I was wondering how the "Relevance" is determined.  It would obviously be hugely beneficial to be ranked as one of the top 5 most relevant products, since that is the default sorting criteria. Originally, I thought it was a combination of Price and Seller Rating.  But after examining a few examples, that doesn't seem to be the case. When doing a search for "Radian XTSL" - a car seat that our website features - JustKidsStore.com appears at/near the bottom of the Google Shopping list, despite having a competitive price and ranking well for that term organically (8-13). http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=radian+xtsl&hl=en&safe=off&cid=15471698622239402479&os=sellers# Do you know what the ranking factors are?  And if so, can you give a few pieces of advice for best practices? Thanks!

    | BarrettAhern
    0
  • tylerfraser


    Hello, If you get bad websites as affiliates through share a sale can that hurt your seo? Thanks Tyler

    | tylerfraser
    0
  • christinarule


    Can anyone recommend any? Thanks in advance.

    | christinarule
    0
  • footsteps


    Hi all, The last few weeks we started working on several affiliate websites. All was fine, the number of pages indexed in Google increased, rankings increased, visitors increased but; After two successful weeks Google noticed what we were doing and decided to crash our party. What we did; Create an affiliate website presenting shoes for ladies (15.000+ pages)
    Create an affiliate website presenting brand shoes only (25.000+ pages)
    Both sites were new domains and we linked them to each other. Biggest boo boo's we think we have made; We didn't put a no follow on the affiliatelinks We linked the websites to each other causing google to spot 25K new links to a new domain. Stuffed the index with 40K new pages out of nothing Didn't exclude the correct parameters in webmastertools so all items got indexed a multiple times. The above resulted in a drop of 95% of visitors and 3 weeks down the road we gained 10% from our low point. All boo boo's are corrected the last few day's and now we are wondering; How long will it take for Google to forgive us? And are we correct in concluding we messed up big time? Hope to hear your insight and let this story be a warning to others trying on this endeavour. Kind regards, Gerwin

    | footsteps
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  • philipjterry


    Hello I would like to increase the value of my value proposition to users by adding complimentor affiliate links and embedded widgets like postcode search to my promote my affiliate's service. I already have a great ranking.... Am I jeopardizing my position by putting outbound links to affiliate sites? Also would a nofollow tag on an affiliate link work? I understand Google is fast changing - so what is the latest advice on this for Spring 2011? Thanks a lot

    | philipjterry
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  • stakouman


    Here is a question,
    if i have a keyword that have over 150.000 searches/Month and the competitors are very low, but if i give the keyword on google search, the site that are listed at top 10 have a Page Rank from 2 to 5, or even 8.
    How can i know if the Page Rank from this sites, have to do with the keyword i wont to optimized? Does the Page Rank have effect to the top 10 Ranking, even if this sites are not specially optimized for this keyword.
    A example:
    www.amazon.de has a PR 8, they sell Books. If i wont to Optimized for a specially book Category, do i can compare to the amazon? or because the Central Page has a PR8, it does have effect on all the under-sites by Amazon, and it will be to difficult to Optimized for this? even if the Searches for the special category are a lot and google keyword says the competitors are low? How can i see if the PR has to do with the keyword, or the site just have this kind of PR without being specialized for the keyword i look after? thanks for all
    stavros

    | stakouman
    0
  • Blargh123


    I'm looking, for an affiliate network solution, that can provide not only conversions through affiliate marketing alone, but also as linkbait.  What kind of tools do we have available? i remember reading a SEOMoz Blog about the best SEO tools of 2010, and i saw some affiliate options there. Looking to hear SEO community opinions on options like this.

    | Blargh123
    0
  • drewhammond


    Alright so here's my situation and hopefully someone can help... I want to be able to pass Google Analytics variables onto my affiliate links so I have some better conversion tracking data (not PPC traffic so no easy dynamic keyword insertion variables). I want to do something like this: User searches "keyword" in Google > User lands on mysite.com > search data is assigned to global variables that I can use in my affiliate link redirect script. afflink.com/?id=123&keyword=[GA keyword variable] Anybody know how I would go about doing that? I've seen other Non-GA tracking scripts do this but I can't figure it out here and it's driving me crazy! Thanks,
    Drew EDIT: Just figured it out after a lot of guess and testing... I'm not sure if the way I'm doing it is the fastest, most optimized way but it works. Solution: I can pull the GA cookie and break it down to retrieve the keyword using PHP. For anyone searching for this in the future, here's how I did it: $gacookie = $_COOKIE['__utmz'];
    $keyword = substr(strstr($gacookie, 'utmctr='),7); ?> Then I can use the $keyword variable wherever I need it. I haven't actually tested this on a live site yet but everything is working fine as of right now. If anyone has a better solution please feel free to answer.

    | drewhammond
    0

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