Affiliate Links Dilemma
-
Hello everyone.
Our e-commerce website virtualsheetmusic.com has several hundreds affiliate incoming links, and many of them are "follow" links. I thought to redirect all incoming affiliate links to a "intermediate" page excluded by the robots.txt file in order to avoid any possible "commercial links" penalty from Google, but I now face a dilemma... most of our best referral links are affiliate links, by excluding those links from our back link profile could give us a big hit in terms of rankings.
How would you solve this dilemma? What would you suggest doing in this sort of cases?
-
Thank you Everett, I think what you wrote makes sense and I'll see what to do. I'll analyze again all my affiliate links and assess the risk of getting rid of those links. If I see I could risk losing rankings in some way, I'll consider to disable the stronger affiliates last.
Thank you again.
-
I can't make the decision for you, but am glad that you understand the situation enough to see your dilemma.
Google is pretty clear about their policy on followable affiliate links. Could you be ranking even better by getting rid of PR-passing affiliate links? Or would that ultimately harm your rankings? It depends on if those links are being seen as paid at the moment, and whether there is any type of penalty applied to the site. You'd probably know via GSC if there was a manual action / penalty but there could be an algorithmic one. If that's the case, you may improve rankings by removing them.
The fact that your affiliate program is in-house means you may be able to fly under algorithmic radars, so to speak, and that those links could be seen as legitimate. But they're not. Remember that and I think you'll be fine.
-
Thank you Everett, that's actually my "dilemma"... I understand the risks of both actions:
1. If I leave things how they are now, I could still benefit of any little juice coming from those links, but I could risk a penalization from Google because of that.
2. If I apply what you are suggesting, I will be safe from any possible penalization from Google, but I could lose any possible juice coming from those affiliate links.
Since from my back link profile it looks like most of our best referrals are affiliate links, I am very afraid to lose a lot of juice and consequently rankings if I disable those as you are suggesting. Data in my hands shows me a strong possibility on that (we have affiliates with a strong SEO profile), whereas I have almost nothing showing that those links are really penalizing me, that's why I have such an hard time to decide what to do.
Another option could be to keep the way it is just for those "strong" affiliate links, whereas disable all other ones...
How would you suggest acting in this kind of scenario?
-
If you have other websites linking to you because of an affiliate program the safest thing to do is make those links (from them to your affiliate program URL) go through an intermediate DOMAIN. You don't care if Google thinks that domain is odd because everyone page is blocked via Robots.txt Disallow: /. You don't even care if the affiliate sites are a little on the spammy end because they're linking to a totally different domain. And instead of submitting disavow files or requesting links be taken down, you can always just let that domain die off to kill ALL affiliate links to the site in one fell swoop if there is ever an issue. That's my recommendation. It's just safer that way.
If you want to retain the pagerank those links "may" be sending, you have to also accept the risk that comes with them.
-
Thank you Mike, I'll try to do that then.
We have also cleaned some suspect backlinks from some old-time-directories that could have had some weight for our latest loss. Even though we had links there for a long time (several years), we have considered the fact that Google could have updated his algorithm to account for those bad links in some way and discount most of our rankings.
To give you an idea of the loss I am talking about, have a look at our SEO visibility on searchmetrics.com:
http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research/?se=1&url=www.virtualsheetmusic.com
From the end of June we have begun to have a big drop in traffic, we have lost around 30% traffic from Google. That could be due to some algorithm change either content side (Panda) or link profile side (Penguin or similar?). We had some Panda related issues in the past, so that was the first possible cause came up to my mind, but since we had very big drops on some major keywords of ours for which we built suspect links in the past, I also thought about a possible Penguin related problem.
Thank you for your thoughts on this!
-
I like that idea. Keeps some of the upside (if there is any), but reduces the risk.
Do you have any other likely suspects besides the affiliate link thing?
The site seems like you could attract some editorial links. Like school music departments for .edus, right?
How bad a % search hit did you take in the last two months?
Best... Mike
-
Yeah, from my back-link profile, it looks like my top affiliates are among my best referring sites from the DA stand point, that's why I am worried to disavow and 302 redirect all of them.
Another solution could be to 302 redirect the smallest ones (most of them) and keep the way they are (301 redirect) the best ones (a few of them) without risking to lose any juice from those high DA affiliates.
What would you think about this kind of solution?
-
If you want to be on the safe side. The only downside would appear to be that if the problem is not affiliate links, you've nofollowed and 302'd the value out of them. Maybe take a look at how much of your link profile is affiiate, non-affiliate and followed/nofolllwed to try and get a handle on what that maneuver might cost you, in the event the affiliate links aren't the problem. I kind of think G has already discounted them, so maybe no big loss.
-
Ok, thanks, and yes, We have already asked to all of our affiliates to add the rel="nofollow" tag, but most of them don't even bother to open our emails, and that's why I was thinking to a fast solution from our side t tackle this issue.
So, back to my original question, you would suggest doing what I was thinking already: either 302 redirect or redirect to a "intermediate" page disallowed inside the robots.txt all affiliate link requests without worrying of losing any possible (not-likely) juice value from those top affiliates of ours. Is that correct?
-
Hi Fabrizo,
My suggestion is to contact all the affiliates, as you are, and get them to nofollow. Keep records of your efforts. I would consider 302ing, so you are not passing link value and therefor on the face of it not benefiting.
I wouldn't disavow them. I think the more likely scenario is that Google stopped counting them as editorial links... not a manual penalty (which you would probably have been notified of). G just figured it out and stopped giving you the boost from them.
Of course, there could be other problems unrelated to affiliate links. But with nofollows, 302s, and building new links.... how wrong could you be?
Best of Luck... Mike
-
Thanks Mike, sorry, I forgot to let you know that we have our own in-house affiliate program, so that affiliate links look like:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/page/?aff=affiliate_id
And then, all requests to that kind of URLs get 301 redirected to:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/page/
We haven't had any manual penalty so far, but we are afraid all those affiliate links could have some weight on the algorithmic side of Penguin or similar. We have experienced a pretty heavy drop in rankings in the last 2 months, and we are considering everything.
Back to my original question, I am trying to understand what's the best route to take: disavow those links or keep them the way they have been for the past 10-15 years?
Thank you again.
-
Hi Fabrizo,
Are these links obvious affiliate links, like CJ.com or similar?
I'm saying that in my experience of working with dozens of sites with affiliate links pointing to them, I don't think it's a very big penalty risk to virtualsheetmusic.com.
If you've experienced a drop in organic search traffic over time, short of having a penalty notice from Google in hand, it's more likely that those links have been de-valued as non-editorial and thus taken some wind out of your sails. This might feel like a penalty, but really it's more like they just don't help like they used to.
As such, spending some time building some editorial links would be more to the point than an intermediate page.
Best... Mike
-
Thank you Mike for your reply.
So, are you suggesting to redirect all affiliates links to my mentioned "intermediate" page, or not? How would you proceed to mitigate the risk from both sides (possible Google penalization and possible rankings degradation from those affiliate links)?
Thank you again very much!
-
Hi Fabrizio,
I don't think I would worry about it too much. Most of that risk, however little it is, is on the site linking to you. In Google's head, affiliate links are not editorially given links... more like (at worst/in concept) bought links, where the site gave the link in return for the affiliate income and therefor needs a nofollow.
Re: the risk for the linked-to site and as you know, affiliate links are not actually controllable by you. Also, Google has become decent at identifying affiliate networks and dismissing the value of them in the first place (assuming you're with some network), as mentioned here by Matt Cutts a while back: http://www.shoutmeloud.com/google-affiliate-links-seo.html
Finally, it looks like the site has enough other types of links that it's link profile is not crazily all affiliate links. Personally, I would put that energy into gaining some more editorially given links.
Best of luck, Fabrizio!
Mike
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
-
Links Not Detected by MOZ, AHREFS, GSC-ARE THESE QUALITY LINKS?
Our SEO provider has been creating content (6 blog posts per month as well as building page write ups) and has been promoting that content. Several links per month have been created as a result of this effort. Many of the links have been from commercial real estate publications. I am concerned that the quality of these links is not high enough to improve our ranking. Most links do not appear on AHREFS, Google Search Console or MOZ. Is this a red flag that these links are weak? Ranking and traffic on the site have improved considerably since this provider began the project in April of 2019. They have been writing about 30 pages about New York City. commercial buildings each month in addition to 4 short blog posts and 2 extremely well researched and authoritative blog posts. My concern is that the links are not of sufficient quality to result increased ranking. That the improvement in ranking is solely due to the addition of new content rather than the creation of these links. Basically, that I am incurring the cost on an ongoing basis of an link building campaign with little to no benefit. That being the case, I would shift resources to content creation and increase and improve content rather than develop links with little value. A sample of links are below: Would greatly appreciate some feedback as to whether these are in fact helpful to the domain authority, reputation and ranking of our website. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan https://patch.com/new-york/bayside/bayside-queens-priciest-area-retail-office-space-study https://qns.com/story/2019/12/04/these-commercial-streets-in-queens-were-among-the-most-expensive-in-2019/ https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/flatbush-ave-priciest-retail-spot-outside-manhattan-study http://thejewishvoice.com/2019/12/07/nycs-most-expensive-commercial-streets-neighborhoods-in-2019-would-surprise-you/ https://atalyst.com/investment-banking-interview-metro-manhattan/0 -
Disavowing 100k Affiliate Links
Hi all, hope you're all good. I am updating our disavow file, we've noticed a couple more spammy links which are pointing at or site. While I was at it, affiliate links came to my mind. At the moment we have over 100k+ affiliate links pointing to the root of our site and other categories/products, most of them are do-follow. However, taking a look at WMT, it's one of our 'Who links the most' and the affiliate network is pointing a total of 115,065 links to us. My question; bearing it mind this site generates over 2million hits a month, is it really worth disavowing the entire affiliate link network. This would result is all of those 100,000 links being disavowed over time. Do you think this would result in a positive? Let me know your thoughts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Links Questions and advice?
I have a website which has a fair few link assets that are doing very well (a lot of really powerful sites have link to them with follow links) but my commercial pages are not doing as well as a lot of sites without any other investment than (mediocre) links direct to there commercial pages with at least 10% of them carrying the money anchor text. Even pages we have had a few links for with generalized real anchor text and reasonable links do not do as well as the above due to none of them carrying the money keyword? Is it me or does google still rely on links to the commercial page and keywords with anchor text to match the money term?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice
I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)
Hey everyone, We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario: We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor. Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed. Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings. **The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients. **The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty. The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
How should i best structure my internal links?
I am new to SEO and looking to employ a logical but effective internal link strategy. Any easy ways to keep track of what page links to what page? I am a little confused regarding anchor text in as much as how I should use this. e.g. for a category page "Towels", I was going to link this to another page we want to build PA for such as "Bath Sheets". What should I put in for anchor text? keep it simple and just put "Bath Sheets" or make it more direct like "Buy Bath Sheets". Should I also vary anchor text if i have another 10 pages internally linking to this or keep it the same. Any advise would be really helpful. Thanks Craig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1