Outbound Affiliate Links - Positive or Negative Effect
-
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
-
Thanks a lot for the valuable advice - looks as though the risk reward ratio does not stack up in my favor just yet. I'm definitely going to hold fire until the Panda update has stabilized even though I am sure I would be benefiting the users.........
-
Isn't it a bit of an contradiction to link to sites you don't trust enough with a followed link? If you are doing it for the users benefit a followed link is best almost all the time.
I would focus on adding truly valuable links, and follow them
-
All in moderation. Google always says "do what's best for your users" but I would stick to a single affiliate link per page to be safe if this was my website. Nofollow is a good way to link to sites you don't trust and I would say it would be applicable to affiliate sites.
-
Hi Philip,
I would hold fire until Google Panda has been rolled out as there are many unknowns about which sites are being hit right now. There are affiliate sites in the US that have taken a nose dive, so for the sake of a few weeks, hold onto what you have and then review again when we all know more.
Regards,
Andy
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 -
Blocking external links in Robots.txt - need advice on Best Practice
I look after an affiliate site that is doing quite well in the search rankings. We've been doing a review of our practices and one thing that has cropped up is our robots.txt. In it, we disallow Google from crawling external links. This used to be best practice in the affiliate industry a couple of years ago, but I wanted to know if this is still the case, and what the implications are if we were to: a/ leave it as is? b/ allow crawling? Thanks in advance.
Affiliate Marketing | | Ben_Malkin_Develo0 -
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 -
Can linking out to a weak site harm my sites SEO?
We have an affiliate that wants us to link to his site to help him get started. His website looks okay and is in the same niche as us. However, he has PR 0 and no Page Trust. We could work in a natural looking link in a news article, but there is no way he could be considered any kind of "authority" link. Can linking to his site harm us?
Affiliate Marketing | | theLotter0 -
Recommended affiliate programmes (particularly UK-based)?
I'm starting a photography/travel/music blog and thought it might be a good idea to stick the occasional affiliate link in when it's appropriate. Does anyone have any recommendations? The related items would mainly be to DVDs, books and music, and sometimes something more travel specific like flights. Are the programmes from the likes of Amazon and ebay good, or would it be better to sign up to a system that covers many companies? It'll be my own CMS if that makes any difference. Thanks. 🙂
Affiliate Marketing | | Alex-Harford0 -
URL Tags / Affiliate tracking help
1. If I give a sales rep a unique tag to put at the end of a URL for tracking purposes, will Google index the "www.mysite.com/service.html?unique-tag" version of a page and display it in search results? 2. Would a tool like Xenu be able to find that version of a URL? Reason for questions: If I give my sales people tags with their names in them, I don't want competitors poaching my sales people by search for all URLs on my domain. Follow up: are there any other potential issues that I should think about? Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | pbhatt0 -
Link exchange
Folks I just thought to myself that this forum must be filled with lovely SEOs who are busy working on multiple clients.... I'm very new to the industry myself... about a month into it 🙂 Any-hoots I was just wondering if anybody is working in a category that may be suitable for a link exchange with http://bluetea.com.au/ .... Please let me know
Affiliate Marketing | | PHDAustralia680 -
Promoting an Affiliate Scheme
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.
Affiliate Marketing | | speedyseo0