Organic Links and Skimlinks Affiliate Program
-
Hi All,
If you're not familiar with Skimlinks, what they do is turn organic links into affiliates links so that publishers can earn commission through our affiliate program. Pretty much every SEO's nightmare.
myfashionlife.com/archives/2013/07/16/get-anne-hathaways-paper-denim-and-cloth-look/ anchor text "Floppy straw hat"
Looking at the source code the link looks clean, but as soon you click on it you get redirected via a 302 to our site. My questions is; is it just users that get redirect or is it the same for search engines?
Screaming frog recognises the link as a 200.
Are we losing all the link juice, or is it fine? I've have half a mind to kick them out of the program.
Cheers
-
The selling point makes sense and I could see how that would be true. But if you are not seeing an increase then it is not worth it, especially if your focus is on the organic traffic.
-
You are right, when I used screaming frog with Googlebot as the agent it didn't pick the link
-
Their selling point was that because bloggers would be rewarded for their links they'd feature our brand and products more often in their posts..... I don't think it is the case. We are just losing organic links and paying for traffic that used to be free.
I'll make sure they are taken out of the program.
Thanks for your help!
-
I think that Googlebot's going to recognize that this is a 302 and not a straight link.
-
Here is what I am seeing. When I view source and look at the link for Floppy Straw Hats I see the URL
http://www.surfdome.com/baku_hats_-baku_congo_hat-_volcano-108584?i
and this link shows me a 200 when I run through it directly. This is probably what Screaming Frog is doing. I would re-run the frog and set the user agent to Google Bot just to see what happens there.
Now when I view that link in the browser and I hover over it and right click the URL and copy I get
When you run this, you get the 302 redirect to the target page
If you scroll down to the bottom, you see the skimlinks JavaScript that is doing this manipulation. FYI it is also adding redirect a link to "Surfdome" at the end of that same line. This is not linked at all in the source code. You have a simple JS rewirte action going on there.
So the bot sees the regular URL and the human sees a redirect via JavaScript.
Depending on if you wear a white or grey hat, this could be considered "cloaking"
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en
"Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines."
This is not the traditional use of the redirect. You would often see a completely different page shown to the bot vs the human using JS versus your example of just showing a 2 different links on a page. That said, Google is reading more and more JS these days http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/11/get-post-and-safely-surfacing-more-of.html
Your issue is not about the 302 passing link equity, but if you want to get penalized for cloaking or not.
The other point that comes up is that since you are paying these bloggers to have this link on the site, I would call these paid links
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
I know you said, "these are organic links" we are now just paying for the referrals. Well, if Google finds that this is worth penalizing, then you have no one to argue with but yourself.
As I see it, you have 2 choices
-
No follow the links and do not use them for link juice but to pay for traffic.
-
Lose the redirects and use the links for ranking benefit (plus you can still get some traffic).
Honestly, seems like you were already getting organic links and traffic for free, so not sure why you would pay people for what you already had. I am sure this helped to get additional links, but you just need to consider the points above to see what is more important for your site.
Hope this helps!
-
-
It looks like it's turning them into 302's, so they're not the straight links you would like.
-
Chris, thanks for your advice, but I think we are going into a completely different subject.
-
Some of those links were created years ago. Created by the bloggers because they simply wanted to. We didn't request them or had any input on what that anchor text would be.
-
I suppose that when I wrote "That link, and hundreds just like that" could have been misinterpreted. There are hundreds of bloggers, linking to hundreds of different pages from our site, all with different anchor text. Again, 100% organic.
We didn't build those links or tell them what the anchor text should be (there are not two with the same anchor text). They were 100% organic links for years, but once Skimlinks joined our affiliate programs, SKIMLINKS changed all those links into affiliate links.
-
-
referral or affiliate, you set yourself up to be penalized if the links and anchor text aren't natural. You're actually better off with the 302'd skimlinks than hundreds of straight links with the same anchor text. I know this isn't what you're looking for but read through this from Yoast: http://yoast.com/cloak-affiliate-links/
-
Ok, maybe if I give some background it will be easier to understand.
That link, and hundreds just like that one used to be organic links, that bloggers created because they wanted to link to an specific product from our site. As soon as Skimlinks joined our affiliate program all those links became affiliate links.
As a result; sales that used to be attributed to the referral channel, are now attributed to the affiliate channel. But what worries me the most is whether those links are still SEO-friendly or not. In the source code they still look SEO-friendly.
-
What is it that you want get out of the non skimlink and what is it that the skimlinks are doing that you think you don't like?
-
They are not affiliate links, they are organic links. What happens is that the blogger uses a tool called Skimlinks (they are the affiliate) that turns organic links into affiliates.
Skimlinks gets paid by us and then they pay part of the comission to the blogger.
If I were to kick Skimlinks out of the program, the organic links would stop redirecting to our site via a 302.
In the source code there is no affiliate tagging in the links, it looks clean. I'm guessing the redirect is done using JavaScript. My questions is: does Google see a clean link, or do they also get redirected via 302 when they try to follow it?
-
You won't be getting any link juice through those links but you shouldn't be looking for any from your affiliates either, as best practice for aff links is that they are not followed links.
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
-
Should we optimise our internal links?
Hi again, We recently had a technical search audit done by a specialist agency and they discovered a number of internal links that caused redirects to happen. The agency has recommended we update all of these links to link directly to the destination so we don't lose out on link equity. We'd just like to know if you think this would be a worthwhile use of our time. Our web team seem to think that returning a 301 to a crawler means that the crawler will stop indexing the original URL and instead index the redirected destination? Thanks all. Clair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iescape2 -
Traffic from organic grew significantly. But why?
Hello, In our e-commerce business we saw significant growth in organic traffic during the summer months.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ETonnard
This is a period we sell a lot of custom made photobooks. The weird thing is that we didn't do any changes to our photobook pages since 2013, where we didn't have these peaks.
So this is good news, but... What would be a good way to start investigating the reason of this increase?
I have a hard time answering the 'why' question. Thank you very much for your help! With kind regards, Yannick TiWWKX9.png0 -
Schema.org for Organization Logos
Hi, We have 4 different sites on four different domains. each domain serves a different market and sells different products. However, all 4 sites have the same logo. we are thinking of implementing the logo schema.org for our logo - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/05/using-schemaorg-markup-for-organization.html Does any one know if Google might see the identical logos (even if Google cant actually see an Image like a human) for different domains as something spammy? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Block Level Link Juice
I need a better understanding of how links in different parts of the page pass juice. Much has been written about how footer links pass less juice than other parts of the page. The question I have is that if a page has a hypothetical 1000 points of Link Juice and can pass on +/-800 points via links, and I have 1 and only 1 link in the footer to another page, does it pass the full 800 points? Or... since footers only pass a small fraction of link juice, it passes lets say 80 points, and the other 720 points stays locked up on the page. This question is a hypothetical - I'm just trying to understand relationships. I don't know if I've explained the question too well, but if someone could answer i it, or point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Are links from pages in other languages ok?
Hey everyone, what are your thoughts on this? If a bunch of links from another language, say the site is in Canada and is in English but we have french links pointing to the site with english keywords...is that ok? Will that harm us? Opinions? Facts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Looking for a link builder
Hey guys I'm looking for a freelance link builder to work with my agency. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks Jaime
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | flemingsteele0 -
What is your onsite linking strategy?
So there are a few different routes to take when you're SEOing your site. My quest is to determine which is the best way to approach this. Let's use a real life example of a product. It's project management software, online collaboration software, employee scheduling tool, business process streamlining tool, client management tool and task/to do manager. It works for virtually any industry. I've created my keyword document and it's HUGE. I've created my wireframe with related keyphrases in buckets. Each one of the example keyphrases listed above have slight variations then a whole list of long tails. I have a few options as I see it: Create site sections within the main site that focus on each (This can make the site look slightly sloppy and categories would have to be masked so it doesn't appear spammy) Create a page in the blog relevant to each keyphrase and link all subsequent blog posts within that keyphrase family directly to that blog post (This seems like my best option) and have cta's or conversion mechanisms on this page Link all keyphrases to the home page (Seems like a terrible idea) Not sure if I answered my own question here, but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cmdsonline0 -
Advertising links hurt SEO?
I'm working with a publisher who said that having DFA links on his site will hurt his SEO. He is taking my link and pointing it back to his site and then to mine. Does that sound right to you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GFTMarketer0