Affiliate links and Panda
-
Hello all, my question relates to the recent panda changes and the subsequent impact on pages with affiliate links.
I have a hub of pages on my website talking about parcel delivery. Each page has unique, quality content and up until about 3 weeks ago they were starting to achieve strong rankings. We then decided to add some affiliate links (just 3) on each of the 5 parcel related pages we have. The rankings for each of these pages have tanked completely; rather than top 20, we're now outside of the top 100 for all of them.
When we noticed this we masked the link, changing it to domain.com/index/affiliate; we also no followed the link. Alas this has had minimal effect in restoring the rankings.
What i'm now thinking of doing is removing the affiliate links from the parcel landing pages altogether and instead providing users with a no followed link to another page within the site upon which we would have the affiliate links. This page would also be no indexed as well.
My question is: Is this a good idea and if so will it restore my previous rankings over time, or have those pages (as a result of the affiliate links) been permanently down graded?? Any assistance would be gratefully received!
-
don't use meta refresh. Use a 301 redirect. Google 301 and htaccess. If you're using a CMS, there are plugins for that.
-
I am 100% sure Google doesn't like a page with more than one or two affiliate links. I had a similar problem about 3 months ago and A/B testing twice clearly showed:
-
Links from 10 to 3 : Better ranking.
-
Links from 3 to 2: Even better ranking.
It doesn't matter at all if you nofollow them or use unmasked or 301 redirects, they just detect all sorts of aff. links.
-
-
What do you think the best way is to hide them?
When I link to an affiliate, I have the link on my page go to a page in a directory like /go, and I have the /go directory disallowed in robots.txt.
Then on the go page (/go/link1.php), I have the affiliate link in a meta refresh=0.
Is there a better way to do this?
-
Hi Daniel,
Is this still an issue that you are working to resolve? Panda and manual reviews of your site are unlikely to penalize you for one thing alone. There are a lot of purely affiliate sites out there with unmasked links that rank just fine.
There is some debate as to the negative impact of affiliate links, but I do prefer to hide them. If Google does know where they go, fine, but I also use it to make seeing the actual bounce rate on a page easier. And yes, they should always be nofollow.
I would recommend checking on the dates and seeing whether the drop in Google organic traffic aligns with one of the Panda updates. You then know if you need to focus on Panda issues or something else.
-
Hi Journeyman
Many thanks for the reply and the advice, which begs another question!
If Google can still see the road that the visitor takes to the no index no followed page where I intend to place the affiliate links will it restore the authority and therefore ranks of the parcel related landing pages where I originally placed the links, or will it still devalue these pages on account of the fact that we are linking from them to pages with affiliate links?
I have no intention of trying to achieve rankings for the no indexed page where I want to place the affiliate links but I desperately want to restore the parcel related pages for which previously I had some good rankings.
My understanding was that Google determines the value on a page by page basis so my thought was that if I remove the affiliate links from the landing page and then provide a to an internal page with the affiliate links it might restore the authority of the landing page even if it attributes zero value / authority to the other internal page on which I want to place the links?
Hope that makes sense!
Many thanks
-
Hi,
I had the same issue with a client very recently.
In my case the issues was 100% the outgoing traffic via affiliate links as after total removal the traffic went back up. (also after a re-inclusion request)
If you do add no-follow and send the link to a no index no follow internal page and on this page you place the affiliate links google will still know the "road" that the visitor took so it will still see the behavior (from the tool bar and referral source)
The best approach in my case was to reduce the number of affiliate links, add new non affiliate resources, other links to good sources on the subject, "dress" everything in a nice user friendly UX so overall the outgoing traffic will not only be affiliate channels and it looks like in Google's eyes this is natural and ok.
Now the traffic is more then previous levels (also based on some new clean link building sessions). It could be just a spike as this was very recently but still.... the traffic before the link building campaigns was at the same level as before.
Hope it 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
-
What is the danger of integrating different affiliate program widgets far under our core content?
We have pages with lots of unique content that are ranking very well in google.
Affiliate Marketing | | lcourse
I am now considering to add towards the end of the pages widgets from the booking.com affiliate program and also from the affiliate program of two other accommodtion sites. These affilliate widgets would be placed far beyond our core content in the bottom 15% of the page. Each widget will contain a large number of links to the different accomodation options that booking.com or others offer. In our context this information would be indeed very useful for our visitors. Shall I be concerned that our google rankings may suffer due to google perceiving our site as less quality (or google misinterpreting our intent to generate traffic to affiliate programs) ? If google rankings would be suffering, is this something we would normally see in a week (most of our pages are crawled daily by google) and then recover in a week when we would remove the widgets or would this generally be something that would affect the ranking over the course of a month or more? Shall I be concerned abou link dillution since my pages would now have a lot of links pointing to the affiliate sites, which could devalue my internal links? Any thoughts?0 -
What impact do affiliate links have on SEO
We commonly reference engineering standards on our site (because half our products are known and searched for by those standard names) and have just signed up as an affiliate to an organisation that sell the standards. Which seems a nice match We're going through and making sure all are no follow now because that seems the general advice - but should we be doing anything else? Yoast says you should mask affiliate links - https://yoast.com/affiliate-links-and-seo/ - but that was from 2010. Matt Cutts is fairly clear on nonfollow - http://www.webpronews.com/heres-what-googles-matt-cutts-says-about-affiliate-links-and-nofollow-2012-06 - but not on whether it affects SERPS Does it? And what is the best way to handle it? This is a typical example of a page where we would have an affiliate link or two. http://www.oakleysteel.co.uk/fake-mill-certificates-en10168
Affiliate Marketing | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Choosing an Affiliate Software & Link SEO-Value
Hello everyone. I'm looking for recommendations for affiliate software. I'm also curious if there is any truth in the "SEO-value" that some softwares are touting as a benefit. Choosing a Software: This Moz Blog Article says to build it yourself. However, I'm inclined to use an out-of-the-box software for advanced features such as real-time analytics for the affiliate, w-9/1099 processing, etc. MozPerks promotes hasoffers.com which seems overly pricey ($230/month with perk discount) and OMNISTAR who just left me on hold for 10 minutes (and still no anwer from their sales department). So I'm still looking. Any recommendations? SEO-value of Links from Affiliates: Here's an example of what OMNISTAR claims about the SEO value of the way they structure the links from affiliate sites to my site. I hear a variation on this pitch from each software and none of them seem to agree. Does Google want me to clearly tag promotional vs. editorial links? Is there SEO-value in promotional links on affiliate sites or is that a load of bologna? Thanks a bunch!
Affiliate Marketing | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Tweeting affiliate links...?
I work in the music business & am published music producer. I'm an authority in my niche. Yada yada. I have a website that sells products to other music producers. I recently set up an affiliate partnership with someone who is also in the music business but on the management side. She is not an authority to my customers as far as music making goes. But she does have a huge following of people who are EXACTLY who I am targeting. She has been tweeting my affiliate links. The traffic has been great, but the purchase response has not been. I've had much better responses from reviewers and other music producers who have tweeted my links. I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for the most effective ways of tweeting affiliate links? Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | PedroAndJobu0 -
Does Google look at Domain Registrar owner information when counting links into a site?
Question: If the domain registrar owner info is the same on two websites, will Google/other search engines discredit any linking between the two sites when calculating page rank? We have two company sites. One is our main ecommerce domain which we have been linking into from information domains in the past. We recently cut ties with the company that hosted them for us and wish to host them ourselves to preserve the inbound traffic. We are worried, however, that the traffic will be discredited now that we own both domains. Thanks for looking!
Affiliate Marketing | | tennisexpress0 -
What is the negative effect of getting affiliate links to your domain?
Are the negative effects of affiliate links to your domain bigger than the positive effects? Is it better to use a subdomain for your affiliate campaigns? (Because of linkprofile no follow links or time on page effects?) Thanks for responce!
Affiliate Marketing | | ltom0 -
Looking for a nice way to add an amazon affiliate store to my site
We are often asked what our favorite toys, books, resources, etc, are and I want to make a page(s) with our top resources that is a nice clean amazon affiliate store. Are there are good resources anyone knows of to do this? (I'm using a wordpress blog by the way....perhaps there is a plug in?) Thanks.
Affiliate Marketing | | NoahsDad0