Does an affiliate link bring the same SEO juice as a standard link?
-
I wonder if affiliate links, like the ones offered by Amazon Associates program bring the same SEO as would a link to the same page without this additional "ref=..."?
-
Hi Yannick, thank's for replying to my question. I came up with similar conclusions and this was actually the reason for posting this question. I am sure that it's a piece a cake for Google to distinguish affiliated links from standard links and I see a logical reason behind putting different value on those, but I was hopping that somebody would speak from experience, e.g. tested both kinds of links and knows what difference in strength they carry.
-
I'd also add that if you using Google's Affiliate program, the links are their own which then redirect to your site.
-
In my understanding, affiliate links' value are demoted. I think it's pretty easy for google to see a link is an affiliate link. Clicking it will add a certain type of cookie and I believe Google can easily distinguish between these links. Adding a reL=nofollow to the link is the appropriate way to have these links on your site. Beside that, Amazon's affiliate programme is well known, so Google will definetly compensate for that.
However, people aren't convinced that the rel=nofollow attribute doesn't give any value to the link. Some believe it still adds to domain diversity and other fankers besides the "plain" link juice.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Affiliate Marketing vs. Remarketing | What are the differences
What is the difference between CJ Affiliates and Criteo Remarketing? Could someone please define the differences? Thank you!
Affiliate Marketing | | JMSCC0 -
Can 302 chains (affiliate links) from "toxic" sources hurt you? Or are you "shielded"?
Hi, I'm going through some affiliate links, which send visitors to our website via a chain of several 302 redirects Some of them are relevant links, others perhaps not so much. I know that Google doesn't pass PageRank on 302s... But are they still considered valid links that pass, let's say, "reputation", "relevance", "link neighbourhood" kind of signals? Otherwise put, is a 302 similar to adding the "nofollow" attribute on a link? Sort of? Not at all? More succinctly put, should I be worried about "toxic" sources separated from us by 302 redirect chains? By the way, yes I recognize that (Google's 302 redirect chain handling aside) associating our brand with perhaps what some might consider spammy websites is not in general a good move; I'm concerned with the technical SEO implications here however. In fact, this technical information may very well help drive decisions/policies on where we allow our affiliate advertising to appear. Thanks 🙂 PS - The affiliate company by the way is cj.com if that helps
Affiliate Marketing | | ntcma0 -
What is the right way to link to your main site?
Hi, we have a system for tracking the leads that comes from a specific affiliate website. each affiliate has a unique tracking code. not only for affiliates that work with us but also for the SEO team has an affiliate tracking code so our bosses can track the leads and traffic that come from the activity of the SEO team. this means, links towards our website look like: www.mydomain.com/?t_src=campaign&t=AFF&t_cre=links&A=371 www.mydomain.com/?A=371 I have few questions about this: 1. This is the right way to link to my company site? How dose google crawl those link? It's can harm the link value? 2. What is my option to show my boss all the traffic / leads that our seo team brings to the site trough Google Analytics? Hope to get your support. Thanks in advance.
Affiliate Marketing | | JonsonSwartz0 -
What is the best way to boost no. of quality sites linking in?
Analysing my site ranking compared to competitors, I see that our weakness is getting others to share our content and link into it via their own blogs and social media - although I would say our social media activity is pretty good. We have also worked on getting listed free on relevant sites related to our product area (learn spanish in spain) in order to increase sites linking but this is still minute compared to our 2 main competitors. (As a note: paid listings are not totally justifiable for us at this point in time but perhaps in the future we will expand on this). Am I missing something here?
Affiliate Marketing | | sparkit0 -
Does having affiliates hurt seo?
one of my clients has a TON of affiliates out there building links back to his site all with the ?ref=AFFILIATENAME tracking string does google understand this and not count these links or is there a way to nofollow all links with this tracking string? just wondering how big companies rank well and still have thousands of affiliates building links on all kinds of properties using all kinds of methods thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | Ezpro90 -
Redirect to Affiliate script via htacces - Is that risky?
Hi, We are offering an affiliate programme to publishers. The problem is that the links to the Affiliate Script are very user-UNfriendly (something like http://scripts.affiliateprogramme....../..../....) I would like to give them a simple url: www.website.com/PublishersPage And then redirect this via HTACCESS to the script link (which would then send them back to us). Would that be a problem for SEO? for Google? Thank you for your help.
Affiliate Marketing | | goodoil0 -
Casino SEO
I'm considering entering the online casino arena with an affiliate site. These keywords such as 'online roulette', 'online blackjack' are massively competitive with high page and domain authority sites on page one. Does anyone have any experience of this area and is it possible to compete in it? Apparently long tail keywords don't really convert in this area so I may have to go for these highly competitive keywords. Any thoughts?
Affiliate Marketing | | SamCUK0 -
Affiliate network options?
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.
Affiliate Marketing | | Blargh1230