SEO and Affiliate Links
-
Hello,
We run a travel related website and we started to run our own affilate newtwork to promote the sales of our products.
At the moment the affilate links pont to a spacific affilate url in order to tack conversions :
I'm wondering how is the best way to run a private affilate programm considering SEO:
Is there a way yo benefit from those links ?
What are the best strategies to do this?
If yes, Is there any benefit from redirecting 301 those links to the original page (the one accesible to google and the one we want to rank for) or is it better to use a king of canonical method.
Thanks a lot for sharing you experiences , giving your opinion and indicate resources.
Best Regards
Daria
-
Any update on this so far Daria?
-
Thanks for all your good Suggestions. I will do more research now that I have little bit more information on the subject and be back soon.
I hope you will still be around.
-
You can track any type of link you like. Google is good at detecting affiliate links built in common formats or run through big networks. However there are plenty of links around that are part of an affiliate program and totally undetectable by algorithmic means.
One example: I've previously written scripts to track referred sales from the referring domain. No tracking URL was used.
If I was building an affiliate program with the SEO benefit of the links in mind I'd probably use (or at least offer) a method like that. There is also another trick that I've seen used in the travel sector quite heavily using malformed URLs which I think it slightly more theoretically traceable, but seems to work just fine.
Even simpler I would suggest that most forms that don't go through a known network and don't use an obvious form like &aff_id=xxx or &affiliate=xxx will probably count.
I'd imagine that doing such is pretty much a textbook example of a paid link. You'd need to consider that and be sure you were happy with such risk. Either way I would strongly disagree with the other comments that affiliate links don't count. I'd also question the suggestion that affiliates will always nofollow as well.
More pressing I would consider whether you are possibly causing a duplicate content issue with your URL structure.
If abcweb.com/affiliate1/nameqaz and abcweb.com/affiliate2/nameqaz both point to the same page and there is no 301 or canonical in place then you could end up with multiple versions of the same page indexed. I'd opt for a 301 if you are stuck with that structure which would also help direct the link equity if that is your concern.
Better still I'd pass one (or more) get vars and have these ignored through webmaster tools. If you were using abcweb.com/nameqaz?rand=111 & abcweb.com/nameqaz?rand=222 and had ?rand ignored in webmaster tools that would solve a couple of issues.
I'm not endorsing everything above as a great tactic for every project. However it is all correct.
-
As Gamer07 said, Google is pretty good at detecting these, so many the affiliate links themselves should not give much SEO benefit. However incorrect implementation could lead to issues with duplicate content.
If you are going to send your affiliate links through a different directory than the main page - such as /affiliate/ then you should make sure that you block this directory with robots.txt - as an extra precaution I would add canonical URLs to the page since you cannot guarantee all incoming links will be no-followed.
Personally, I think the best method would be to use the one main page that you direct both visitors and affiliates to and then add a hashtag (#) to the URL for affiliates and include their affiliate ID after that.
- Edited portion of last paragraph (left out a word) and corrected spelling error
-
As far as I know, Google is pretty good at detecting affiliate links and most affiliate marketers add "nofollow" to those links anyway. So you won't receive any link juice with those affiliate links.
I see some of the affiliate programs prefer to use seperate domains for affiliate links and then some others use their own domain name.
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 external link goals in GA
I have recently switched all my travel affiliate links to TripAdvisor using their javascript code that converts the natural links (direct links to TA URLs) to affiliate links. I have set up goal tracking in GA to try to put a monetary value on clicks through to these links (based on the known conversion rate to commissionable bookings) but GA is over-reporting the goals by a very large margin. I'm wondering what I've done wrong. The first screen shot below is of the goal settings I used in GA. The second screenshot shows that GA is reporting 7125 goal completions since I set up the goal on 7 August. The third screenshot shows the actual number of GA events recorded on outbound clicks to TA URLs in the same period, which is just 97. So the goal completions being recorded far exceed the actual goal completions, but I'm not sure why. I know I've done something wrong but as this is the first time I've used goals, I'd appreciate some help to see what I've done wrong. Thank you. 3f7dc3de6f9f1373d47994144a5cb016 56aa39130a7d54b07d8f2ce9cf1d7fb0 35ee827275928ca8c4d4c941f0672ef8
Affiliate Marketing | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Affiliate Program: Does anyone know how to set this up?
Hi Guys Does anyone know how I can make a affiliate programme on my website eg - I have a sales person in two of our local regions and I want to find a way I can track any sales made through them via my website so I can pay them their commission. Any advice around this, the website is wordpress! Cheers Justin
Affiliate Marketing | | edward-may0 -
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 -
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 -
'legitimate' link wheels
I was wondering what SEOMoz' thoughts are on the mega legitimate link wheel sites that are out there. TechMediaNet have been buying up massive news/media sites which arent really monetised (adsense) like http://www.space.com/ http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/ livescience.com and others and generating, admittedly good quality, curated content. Then seeding them with content with backlinks to their money site, toptenreviews.com which in essence is a review site with thousands of pages loaded with affiliate links no better than any of the other site out there. e.g. http://www.livescience.com/9755-bing.html due to the scale of what they're doing pretty much any keyword search i do with review in it (the last thing i wanted to purchase was a usb 3 hub) ends up with toptenreviews.com dominating the serps presumably due to the high PR the viral nature of the media sites are working with. Do you think Google will crack down on this, or do you think it's capitalism in action? TechMediaNet have invested millions in this project and just gotten another $33 million in funding recently.....
Affiliate Marketing | | idimmu0 -
Ecommerce affiliate marketing comparison engine
Does anyone know if there is such a thing as an ecommerce comparison platform for affiliate programs? Something that would say, take a particular product, and let the user compare between Amazon, eBay, Walmart (all would be through affiliate programs). Does such a thing exist? Or is such a thing even feasible? oops, sorry for multiple posts, please let me know if i can delete somehow
Affiliate Marketing | | Mozzin0 -
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 -
Casino SEO
I'm considering entering the online casino arena with an affiliate site. These keywords such as 'online roulette', 'online blackjack' are massively competitive with high page and domain authority sites on page one. Does anyone have any experience of this area and is it possible to compete in it? Apparently long tail keywords don't really convert in this area so I may have to go for these highly competitive keywords. Any thoughts?
Affiliate Marketing | | SamCUK0