How many affiliate links is considered too many?
-
Hi,
Let's say you have great reviews for 50 products and some of these products do have affiliate links on review pages.
And then you have user scores and you come up with a top 20 product list sorted by user scores.
Now if you have the list of top 20 products on one page and all these products have an affiliate link (with nofollow relation and a 301 redirect) on the same page with only a couple of images and a summary of the review linked to the review pages, would this still be considered as what Google calls a "bridge page"?
Would it be better to still generate the top 20 list but rather link to review pages only? (to avoid too many affiliate links on one single page).
-
Thanks for the detailed answer Ryan.
That was very helpful.
best,
-
Exactly!
Let's use three examples involving product reviews of the latest James Bond spy watch.
1 - A product review site which offers 20 affiliate links to various sites visitors can go to and purchase the watch being reviewed. The site owner earns an affiliate fee from all of the sites so he/she does not care which site is used to make the purchase.
2. A product review which offers 1 affiliate link. The site owner likely chose this link because it allows them to earn the highest commission.
3. A product review page which offers the best ?4 links. The site owner shares he searches many sites and provides the best offers for visitors. He compares the affiliate sites and mentions why each link was selected (i.e. fastest shipping, best price, best return policy, etc). He also has an understanding with the seller that if there are any customer service issues then his site will pull the links to the "bad" site. In this case, the site owner is acting as a customer advocate.
If you wanted to buy a product, which page would you find most helpful? A sea of 20 links to random sites offering the products so you can try to figure out the best price and other factors which are important? Or the one link which you assume has a deal with the site owner? Or the last option which seems authentic and the site owner is genuinely helpful?
-
Thanks for the reply Ryan. So it is all about user experience and it doesn't cause any technical issues with ranking mechanism? When you say "rest will work out", do you mean, if the user experience is better, it improves user interaction and page-time (helps with bounce rate too) and this all leads to better ranking?
-
I apologize for the delayed reply.
Extra links on the page does not really detract from the ability of that page to rank. Instead it detracts from the value of all the other links on the page which can impact other pages on your website.
Links are one of the many components which are used to evaluate your overall ranking for a given keyword.
In short, step back and look at the page as a visitor. Try to present the page in the manner which is the most sincerely helpful to users, and the rest will work out. If you present one affiliate link to your best affiliate site, that is helpful. If you present the top 3 with a description of the differences, that is helpful as well. For example:
Site 1 link - cheapest
Site 2 link - free 2 day shipping
Site 3 link - 5 year warranty
If you offer 10 links and they are all the same, that is really not helpful to users.
-
Thanks for the answer.
Now that you mention the disallowing via robots.txt, I have done that after a little bit of research on google's webmaster pages and some other sites.
After considering all the answers and my research, it looks like, the best is to keep the list with fewer links and more content just like the review pages.
-
Have you blocked all the links from being crawled? e.g. /go/affurl - block /go/ in robots.txt ?
-
Thanks for the reply
Yes the reviews are all unique and they receive great feedback from users. I don't worry about the review pages as most of them rank in top 20 and even top 10 in SERPs.
My question was all technical and related to that specific page, which is the top 20 page I am talking about. There is no manipulation involved but it is a LIST that ALSO gives the user an option to directly visit the product page (through affiliate links) or read the rest of the whole review first (which the top 20 list page only displays a small amount of the review).
If so you need to understand each link you add detracts from the overall link value of your page.
So basically, after all you are saying the list page won't be able to rank better with so many links in it? If that's the case, I will remove the product page (affiliate) links from the list and leave only the links that go to the product reviews (internal links).
-
Regarding a bridge page, Google's policies are quite clear and can be located here: http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=190435
In brief, the defining factor is whether or not your web page offers a true value to users. Are your reviews authentic, unique and sincerely helpful? Are they well presented? If so, then it would not be considered a bridge page.
How many affiliate links is considered too many?
Too many for what exactly? Are you trying to rank your website in organic search? If so you need to understand each link you add detracts from the overall link value of your page.
Too many for users? Begin by using your best judgement and perform A/B testing.
In short, if you configure your site to provide the most authentic value for users and you succeed, Google will not have any problem with your site. If you attempt to manipulate your users or Google, then you are risking a penalty.
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 Affiliate links from (very) shady websites will effect rankings?
Should I be worried , and if so what to do, if affiliates are linking from shady / gaming/adult websites? or dost the fact that the links are nofollow solve this issue completely ?
Affiliate Marketing | | KSafer0 -
Affiliate marketing for our Amazon Products ??
Hi Guys. Can any recommend or is it possible to build an affiliate marketing programme to generate sales from our Amazon product pages rather the the traditional way of generating sales through your own website ? Can anyone advise ? Or recommend any companies ? Thanks Gareth
Affiliate Marketing | | GAZ090 -
Low value link building to sitemap.xml
During some competitive research recently I discovered one of my clients competitors sites had an interesting backlink profile. Looking at the top-pages report in Open Site Explorer the home page was the #1 page (as you'd expect) with 2.5k links from about 500 linking root domains The second page was the sitemap.xml (~1.5k links, 400 linking root domains) and the third was their /feed page (again, ~1.5k links, 350 linking root domains). Links to these two pages aren't something that would happen naturally (particularly the sitemap.xml). There's a whole load of evidence for nasty low quality link building such as over-optimised keyword rich anchor text, comment spam, and even some blog/article based link networks. It's a pretty nasty niche with lots of cut-throat affiliate marketing. My guess here is that someone may have made a mistake using an automated link building too, but I'd be interested in what you might think? Have you seen this before? (Sorry, I can't reveal the domains in question as I'm bound by an NDA.)
Affiliate Marketing | | DougRoberts0 -
Issues with centrally hosting your own affiliate links?
Can anyone see any issues centralising affiliate links across a network? Example - many of us would use some kind of redirect from our sites like abc.com/go/afflink1
Affiliate Marketing | | RaceMedia
bcd.com/go/afflink1 using either htaccess, php or javascript to redirect to the affiliate site But as your network of site grows - to change a link involves visiting 40 sites to change each of the files in the "go" folders. Would there be any net effect from using an otherwise vacant domain to host the links - so they only need to be changed in one place? Example
abc/go/afflink1 links to afflinks.com/1 which then redirects to affiliate site
bcd/go/afflink1 links to afflinks.com/1 which then redirects to affiliate site So all your links across the network for afflink1 would point to your afflinks.com/1 Any changes only require changes to one file afflinks.com/1 Assuming there is nothing else on afflinks.com - would there be any issues? Assume all links no followed and afflinks.com noindex. AND.... our redirects have been in place for some years using javascript,php or .htaccess. What is the current best practice for redirecting affiliate links?0 -
Links exchange - Penguin update potential ??
Hi Everyone, If site A and site B exchange links in the past, it used to be kind of voided. So it is a practicve that we had pretty uch put on the side. But with the new penguin update, do you guys think that if 2 web sites are contacting each other to share a link in the interest of the user that it might be a new best practice to implement? Example, Car site contact car suspension site to exchange a link on relevant content such as blog articles or specific content on a page. What are your thoughts about that ? I am curious to know if anyone is wondering abouot that... Thanks, Alex
Affiliate Marketing | | webit400 -
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 -
Merchant´s data feed for affiliates is the same content as their own website...
Hi Some advice appreciated. Started working on a site and found out that they are giving their unique content to their affiliates (an XML feed so appearing on another domain). In this case, if they want to provide the data like that, how can we protect ourselves? Should we use author tags in our html, is that necessary? Is there any fix other than "stop doing that and give them different content"? Thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | xoffie0 -
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