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
-
"Your site wont get any penalties as long as your site was indexed first."
Who is indexed first does not matter. What matters is who has authority. Authority often wins even if last published.
-
Lots of affiliates are really really smart people. If you require them to use rel=canonical they will know what you are doing and what the result will be. So, if you have great affiliates don't do this to them unless you want to risk losing them.
I am an affiliate and if the program manager told me to rel=canonical my pages to his I would reply.... "you point your pages to MY site or I am leaving".
I would not be linking to them either because their product might go through a shopping cart on my domain.
If I ran an affiliate program and had very valuable and smart affiliates I would produce new content for my own site that takes me out of competition with the affiliates and let them know that they are free to use the data feed or create their own unique descriptions. But that descriptions on my site are off limits.
You don't want your superaffiliates jumping to the competition or becoming your competition. They are not married to you and even if they are they will file for divorce.
-
"Your site wont get any penalties as long as your site was indexed first."
So that´s 100% the case, if we were indexed first and our content is indexed no need to worry?
-
I am not sure whether that's a good solution or not, but look into the option of providing no product description in your feed. Just the Product Name, Categories, Tags/Attributes etc. Maybe a shorter version of the description...First 100 characters maybe ? That would at-least protect from future datafeed consumers....
-
It would be great if their was a plugin or Feed setting that automatically added the canonical tag for you, but im not sure about that.
If they are scraping the content via feeds, then you could include a link to the same page in the content.
Create a link in the content linking to the page URL so that when people scrape the content, the link will still be on other websites, linking to the original source. (do this creatively, perhaps hyperlink the page title in the article)
Your site wont get any penalties as long as your site was indexed first.
Greg
-
Hi
The websites on which our content will be appearing also pull XML info from many websites so we can´t control them as tightly as ourselves.
Is there anything we can do on our own pages to ensure we get authorship (I though Author tags, no), so we allow them to have the content but google always understands our´s is the original?
Both your solutions mean action on another company´s site.
-
Hi
You have 2 options.
1.) Add a rel=canonical tag on their page with the URL to the original content on your website.
2.) Link to the original content via a URL or text link on their pages
From Matt Cutts:
_We've had a lot of interest in these meta tags, particularly in how the syndication-source tag relates to rel=canonical. After evaluating this feedback, we’ve updated our system to use rel=canonical instead of syndication-source, if both are specified. _
If you know the full URL, rel=canonical is preferred, and you need not specify syndication-source.
If you know a partial URL, or just the domain name, continue using syndication-source.
We've also had people ask "why metatag instead of linktag"? We actually support both forms for the tag, and you can use either. However, we believe the linktag form is more in line with the spirit of the standard, and encourage new users to implement the linktag form rather than the metatag form we originally proposed.
Greg
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
-
Comparison of affiliate marketing programs
Looking for a comparison of major affiliate marketing programs (Amazon Associates vs Commission Junction). Can someone point me in the right direction?
Affiliate Marketing | | nicole.healthline0 -
Where can I find best resources for Affiliate Marketing?
Any suggestion for Affiliate training, forums, seminars, etc. for newbie? I'm doing my research but would like to hear from pros. I'm experienced web developer and Adsense publisher, now want to step in the world of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing | | webplex0 -
Affiliate marketing dead?
I have created a network of travel websites that I have decided to promote little by little.. Also so they getdomain age and google trust.... but now when you search for all my main keyphrases... you either have wikitravel,lonelyplanet,frommers and other big brand. I guess that Google gave them better value as to get trusted travel information... However, it seems it will be very difficult to rank my sites. I could do long tail keyphrases but again might not be worth it... I used to work as a SEO consultant for other travel sites selling products... they still rank pretty well as they are sites of value selling something.. of course threy compete with other sites but we are in the same level. How can you compete with loneyplanet with your affiliate site because I am not selling anything on my sites. I am pretty much desperate. I designed a network of 30 sites... all good content with good SEO on the page... of course, I will be honest. I might have to change the content to make it better... you can check one of my site here; www.simplyparis.org it is worth it or better stop this project and focus on 1 product oriented website ? Is anyone working as an affiliate marketer with experience after google panda and pinguin ? is affiliate marketing dead in 2013 now?
Affiliate Marketing | | sandyallain0 -
Can anyone help me find the broadband ISP affiliate program I need?
I have a couple sites that deal with broadband internet access, and I'm looking to monetize beyond adsense. I'd like to sign up for some affiliate programs from internet service providers like Charter, CenturyLink, Comcast, etc. I found a couple affiliate programs but I am having no luck at all figuring out the programs that so many other websites are involved with. In about every case, the user is able to enter in their address and then a search is performed, returning programs available at their location. The programs I've found just do the traditional ad click-throughs for a possible commission. Can anyone enlighten me what kind of programs they are using?
Affiliate Marketing | | bizzer0 -
How should I deal with the affiliate URLs we create through our affiliate program?
Our website offers an affiliate program and every affiliate gets a link http://www.ourwebsite.com/?affiliateID. Because we get many such links we use redirects to avoid duplicate content. Unfortunately we have 302 redirects set up and I want to make them 301. Many of our affiliates build backlinks using their http://www.ourwebsite.com/?affiliateID as the URL. If such links were redirected through a 301, would they pass any juice? Can our site get penalized by search engines for having backlinks to URLs that contain affiliate IDs, URLs that are 301 redirected to our homepage lets say?
Affiliate Marketing | | nick.leech0 -
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!
Affiliate Marketing | | danielparry0 -
How much link juice passes through urls with affiliate id's?
hi we can get a valuable link with the desired anchor text from a news site. the destination url would be something like www.site.com/product. but in order to track conversions, our sales team would like to add an affiliate id to the url, so that it would look like this: www.site.com/product?sess_affiliate=ta how much link juice would a link to this affiliate url pass? would we be shooting our wad by linking to the ?sess-URL instead of the original URL?
Affiliate Marketing | | zeepartner0 -
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
Affiliate Marketing | | philipjterry0