Gaining juice from affiliate links
-
Afternoon Mozzers,
We run a basic affiliate program whereby we distribute banners and tools to affiliate sites who then link back to our homepage via these, often through a tool that incorporates an HTML link with our primary keyword term embedded. This banner/tool/link heads to our homepage, and will then incorporate that particular affiliate's unique code in the URL, eg. www.example.com/1A-265-GNH
Seems pretty standard practice so far?
So, considering this, that we include our primary keyword term in HTML in some banners, some also link to our homepage via an embedded image (and others then just work off cookies as per usual), can anyone hazard a guess, or know for certain, the beneficence of this as a link building means?
I ask in terms of trying to determine whether to continue punting our tools and banners as a decent link building opportunity, or concentrate more on other link building means.
Hope I've been clear enough, but am happy to elaborate if need be.
Cheers
-
Thanks, Heather. Getting a clearer picture now.
-
Hi Martin
The parameters in the URL are a big giveaway that this is an affiliate/paid link, so it's not a good idea to rely on these solely for your link building campaigns. There are ways round this by using cookies to store the affiliate details and keeping your URL clean, but your current system may not allow this.
As Ryan says, never have all your link building eggs in one basket. It's much better to diversify. This will look more natural to the search engines and hopefully mean any changes in Google's algorithm, should affect you too badly.
-
Thanks, Ryan.
Great link, too.
-
Concentrate on other link building efforts.
Affiliate links should be nofollow. If Google determines a link is related to an affiliate program, they will devalue the link.
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
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
-
Setting up small affiliate network - Do follow?
I have a client that I help with both SEO and marketing. I have thought about approaching 5-10 niche appropriate bloggers to join a custom affiliate network. I'd like to gain both sales and backlinks. I know it's gray, but do you have any advice?
Affiliate Marketing | | julie-getonthemap0 -
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 -
Looking for a way to crawl and test validity of affiliate links at scale. Ideas?
Hey all, I'm on the hunt for a service that will crawl our affiliate links and let us know when they return an error. I need to know that the last URL in the chain is returning a 200 over thousands of pages and links on a continual basis. The hitch is that most crawlers like Screaming Frog will return all of our links as working because it's only testing the first step, and this really requires a cloud solution anyway. Anyone happen to know of something? Edit for clarity's sake: I need something to check entire redirect chains in bulk that isn't a Wordpress plugin, isn't a website where you plug in a URL and it cuts you off after the first 100 results, and has the ability to crawl the site and provide reporting on a continual basis. Bi75jku
Affiliate Marketing | | BradsDeals0 -
How to flag inbound affiliate links to Search Engines
Afternoon Mozzers, I was chatting to our VP of marketing earlier about one of our sites with a somewhat unhealthy looking link profile. This is primarily caused by the sector its in and the fact that lots of low quality lead generators / affiliates operate there, sending traffic to us in return for payment on accepted leads. Now, he recalled that there is a way to mark these inbound links, through a URL parameter he thought, as being affiliates and therefore should be ignored as we don’t want them misinterpreted as an attempt to manipulate our rankings. I have been doing a spot of research but can't find a straight answer. heres a few articles i looked at: blogaid, Yoast, Webmaster world and the Moz Q&A.The problem is all these are from the perspective of a site linking out and acting as an affiliate, so all deal with that page not losing PR. The two methods i have derived from this boil down to: No follow the links Use an intermediary redirect page and script which you can block from robots.txt So, back to our case - Are there any ways we can signal to Search engines, as the destination site, that these links are from affiliates (such as this URL parameter our VP had vague recollections off) or should i just get in touch and ask the sites to make them Nofollow? Thanks, Tom.
Affiliate Marketing | | Sarbs0 -
How to prevent affiliates from bringing negative SEO?
Hi there, I'm just about to integrate iDevAffiliate network for one of my sites, however it occurred to me that affiliates may (unfortunately) resort to black hat methods without me becoming aware of it, which could pass negative link juice to my site. Is there any way to use affiliate networks such as iDev without causing this problem? I was thinking of simply using a different URL, but the problem is that 301 redirects won't mitigate the issue. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | freeunlocks0 -
Affiliate URLs Indexed in Google
We have an active in-house affiliate program which has a create-a-link function where affiliate, as in most affiliate programs, can build links back to our content to produce sales. The problem that I am seeing is that some of the affiliate URL versions are being indexed in Google rather than the original page. For instance.. http://www.ourdomain.com/page_start.aspx?affnum=F025212&Start_Page=RaceCar&referrer=createlink is outranking... http://www.ourdomain.com/racecar This presents 2 issues for us. First, this presents duplicate content issues obviously. Second, we pay our affiliates a portion of the sales so, in order to maximize profitability, we'd like the indexed pages to be the original version. What's the best way to handle this? I want to make sure that affiliates continue to get credit for links from their sites but search engine links should go to the original versions.
Affiliate Marketing | | ATIseo0 -
Which affiliate programs pass the best SEO value through their links?
How good is Google at detecting the affiliate nature of those links? How does this rate as a linkbuilding strategy?
Affiliate Marketing | | menachemp0 -
How much SEO benefit am I getting from 'affiliate' links?
Hi all, We run lots of different campaigns with affiliates and as such they have links on their websites pointing back to ours. I was keen to know how much 'link-juice' these kinds of links are passing back to our websites or how much SEO benefit we are getting from them. The links have "?=affiliate" in them. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!! Many thanks! Rob
Affiliate Marketing | | RobertHill0