PHP Redirection better than Nofollow?
-
Hello, if I have affiliate outbound links in my blogs, what's better in terms of SEO, to use PHP Redirection or Nofollow for those links?
For example, instead of using nofollow for the outbound affiliate links, I can use some plugin for WordPress that does this:
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename1 -> redirects to the affiliate link1.
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename2 -> redirects to the affiliate link2.
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename3 -> redirects to the affiliate link3.
Is this better?
Thanks.
-
Excellent points and advice, thanks everyone for answering.
-
Federico - Sure... if it does that as part of the plugin, then it should be good to go...
-
Hey Jeff, probably if there's a plugin designed to specifically redirect affiliate links I bet it already does a 302 redirect while suggesting to add the disallow in the robots.txt (or even adding itself).
-
My hunch is that if you use the method you just outlined, where:
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename1 -> redirects to the affiliate link1... you are essentially creating the equivalent of a followed, 301 redirect from your site to their site, and passing along link value as a result. It would appear to me that this would be a followed link. Depending on the number of redirects, a percentage of the link value may be lost as a result. But if that is what you would like to do, then go ahead and do so.
But a better practice would be to no-follow those links, as they are outbound affiliate links.
Hope this makes sense?
Thanks,
Jeff -
Both will actually have the same effect as long as you nofollow your affiliate links directly or the PHP script that does the redirection is disallowed via the robots.txt + makes a 302 redirect.
The downside of using nofollow is that you can't track the hits on those links from your end, but with PHP you can save that into a DB or any file.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Nofollow backlinks - are they worth it?
As we all attempt to get backlinks for the sites we manage, I have to wonder if it's worth it at all to get a nofollow backlink. Does Google give and positive credit for a link to a site if it is a nofollow link? Obviously, the follow links are worth pursuing. I'm just trying to gain some perspective. Thanks, Wick
Link Building | | wcksmith10 -
Followed and nofollowed links
Hi all, When we should add followed links and when no followed? How this will affect to our site? Should all our links to other sites be no followed? Which sites we should give value? Thank you for your time Miško Macolić Tomičić
Link Building | | Eurasmus.com0 -
Links from Directory Websites with NoFollow Tag
In reviewing our root domain links, I noticed that many of the directories (like Yellow Pages, Insider Pages, Merchant Circle, etc) that there are no follow codes included in the link to our website. Is this a common practice for these directories? Also, I wanted to confirm that this would not help in our link building strategies with any relevant "link juice." Below is a copy and pasted (with some extra characters that shouldn't have copy and pasted), but the key note here is the no follow tag that was included in this link to our site. Visit Website Thanks as always MOZ Community - cheers!
Link Building | | Leithmarketing0 -
Correctly Dealing With Redirects
Hi, Hope someone might be able to help me with this. One of our sites was built badly and the orginal url structure was to have mydomain.com/index.php but these have been changed to mydomain.com by a developer who has put the redirects in place. The problem is that in webmaster tools my link count has dropped to 18 from nearly 2300. I am assuming that Google is not seeing the redirect, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | mitonmark0 -
Dofollow VS noFollow
HI What do you think about nofollow links, are they still give rank for domains. DJ
Link Building | | capitanhajs0 -
301 redirect blog network to main site, good or bad?
Hi, Here is a newbie question. When we launched our web shop 18 months ago I started eight blogs on a different host with keyword rich domain names to get some links to the shop. Today I don't update them, but they have a lot of links to our shop and the blogs have something like DA 20 and PA 30-40. There are lots of links between the blogs as well. Can I do 301 redirects of the blogs/posts to the web shop to rank higher in the SERP for the keywords? If I do, what happens to the links from the blogs to the shop? Will the shop loose a lot of links, but gain in PA, DA, mR etc? Overall, would the shop/main site benefit from this? Or should I just leave the blogs and not mess with them? They don't have much traffic. I appreciate any input, thanks!
Link Building | | DanielSndstrm0 -
301 redirect and how linking domains are counted
I have a domain with several great links to it and I decided to change it to a new domain. I did a 301 redirect to the new domain. My question: Let's say youtube.com is linking to the old domain that is being redirected. Do I want to get a new link from youtube to the new domain as well, or is that pointless since there is already one to the old domain? Thanks,
Link Building | | DavidCurrier
Dave0