In what ways would an affiliate site be okay with Google?
-
I know Google has slammed affiliate sites hard. But affiliate marketing can be a real business and had an idea for one, but I would like to know if ALL affiliate sites are looked at as evil in Google's eyes, or if it's just those with thin and duplicate content in the product descriptions.
I know they want brands to come up ahead of affiliates of that brand, and that makes sense. If I sold Acme Widgets products, Acme Widgets itself should come up ahead of my site. But what if the site sold widgets in general, with the term widgets not a branded keyword? If all product descriptions are unique and well-written content, on a site that is high quality, would it still be downgraded by Google just because there are affilate links in it?
I guess overall the question could be boiled down to, are affiliate sites hit because they have horrible content or because they have links to affiliate programs in them?
-
.....since "real" ecommerce sites don't run ads as well?
Sure they do. Haven't you seen ads on amazon.com? They are called "product ads from external websites" (look low on the page on right side). Ebay has lots of ads. Hayneedle stores have ads (look at bottom of page).
I run ads on my ecommerce sites and block ads from direct competitors. I vary their position depending upon how much I want to throttle my sales.
....I have a site now on precious metals which is high-content, low amount of adsense...
Adsense does better for me with precious metals content than affiliate links. But, then it will depend upon the type of content that you have. Some topics inspire shopping more than others. Of, course the PM sites will gladly buy links from you.... but I am not a seller.
I was thinking I might choose one metals broker affiliate link (like a Goldbank or someone) and place it in the sidebar. Would that small change screw up my rankings?
Probably not... if you nofollow the link.
And, "a site with a shopping cart operated by the affiliate program" I'm not clear on this. Why is that?
It makes you look like a retailer instead of an affiliate.
-
You said, "build a content site with a store, a content site with affiliate links instead of ads" Yes, I'm thinking I'd have many times greater pages with content versus product pages, and the product pages would have long, original content on them. You also said, "affiliate links instead of ads" So, having both ads and affiliate links indicates that I'm not that serious I suppose, since "real" ecommerce sites don't run ads as well? Interesting, this is unrelated to the site I asked the question about, but I have a site now on precious metals, which is high-content, low amount of adsense. I was thinking I might choose one metals broker affiliate link (like a Goldbank or someone) and place it in the sidebar. Would that small change screw up my rankings? And, "a site with a shopping cart operated by the affiliate program" I'm not clear on this. Why is that?
-
Affiliate sites get hit mainly because they are usually just signposts for someone else.
If you want to survive as an affiliate build a content site with a store, a content site with affiliate links instead of ads, or a site with a shopping cart operated by the affiliate program.
-
Affiliate sites are hard to rank because a great number of them are thin pages, scraped content and basically provide little value.
Affiliate sites in the pills, porn or casino niches will also be a lot more difficult to rank... but if you are opening up an affiliate site outside of those niches, and concentrating on providing useful content, then it should be just as difficult as any other site - depending on the competitive landscape.
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
-
Google is mixing a product name with a technical term (both have same name)
Google is mixing a programming term name with a home product and ranking that programming website on top. And there is another 2 search results from the same website (DA - 56, PA - 55, Links - 71K, RD - 4500). Their positions are 1, 2 and 3. But the question/ answer section is showing question/ answer for both of the products, and there is local section, top stories, images, videos, Wikipedia, amazon, ad and an e-commerce site which is showing the home product. There are in total 7 results, and 1 ad. Google also showing description of both of the products on the right. 1,2,3 - Programming website, 4. Amazon, 5. Wikipedia, 6. Wikipedia, 7. E-commerce How difficult it could be to outrank the top result?
Affiliate Marketing | | Rafialam040 -
What's the best way to go about making Duplicate Content Pages on my domain for affiliates?
Hello, I would like to make a bunch of duplicate pages of my site's Home Page, that way affiliates of mine can have a page of their own with links specialized to themselves littered throughout the page. What's the best practice going about this without jeopardizing domain authority from tons of duplicate content signals firing off?
Affiliate Marketing | | Benavest0 -
Stopping these scum sites from sending traffic.
What is the best way to deal with these: http://www.goldenclicking.com/ and www.payclicking.com They keep sending my site traffic, however I am not paying for it, and would prefer to stop these sites. The traffic never converts, and I can't see anywhere that I am paying for the traffic (they are not an affiliate, and can't see them on the GDN) - so I don't even know whats in it for them. Has anyone ever dealt with these types of sites previously, tips on getting them to stop. I was just considering black listing there domains so they can't even reach our site. Thanks in Advance. Andy
Affiliate Marketing | | Andy-Halliday0 -
New to Affiliates Programs - Any advice?
Hi, I've no background knowledge of affiliate programs and am wondering if this would be a good idea for our company, www.vintageheirloom.com? We sell for the most part expensive, vintage bags and jewellery. Would an affiliates program be appropriate or possibly annoy and hinder customer loyalty rather than promote it? I'm using WP with Woocommerce and have seen a plugin that connects Woocommerce with Ambassador. Does anyone have any previous experience with this company, worked well, any things to watch out for etc. One issue that puzzles me if that I get the idea that you can put a tracking code on say a 3rd party blog banner, person clicks and buy product, that gets tracked. But what if customer abandons sale, comes back later directly to site and purchases? I'm guessing this isn't tracked. Is that right? As an aside I've a blogger friend who I'd like to pay for sending traffic that leads to sales. Is this the best way to track? Would the addition of 'How did you hear about us' question during 'Add to cart' process be a back up method? Any downsides to that, other than customer ignoring it? Thanks a lot for looking & any suggestions you may have! Kevin
Affiliate Marketing | | well-its-1-louder0 -
KWs for review site: target *product* or *product review*?
Hi there,
Affiliate Marketing | | Ltsmz
Goal: increase organic targeted buyers traffic on a review site.
What I'm working on now: page optimization According to Google's Keyword Tool usually the keyword Product has 50x searches than Product Review. If you haven't tried it before you don't know how weird it sounds inserting too many times the keyword Product Review inside an actual review. Given that my goal is to increase organic targeted buyers traffic on a review site. My questions are: Do you target product or product review? If you target product review does it make any difference if I insert the keyword product review in sidebar, menu, footer, breadcrumbs instead than in the actual body of the review? What is best? Body or surrounding? Getting back-links on a blog is fairly easy. Anybody has any suggestion on how to get targeted backlinks for a review affiliate site or in general how to increase the organic targeted buyers traffic? Thank youD.0 -
How do the engines look at pages populated using content from an affiliate site?
We are building out a section of our site using an affiliate partnership in the travel space. How would you suggest organizing the content so we do not get penalized for duplicate content? Do you suggest not suing the content at all?
Affiliate Marketing | | TSDigital0 -
In search of the perfect SEO affiliate ID'd URL
Hi, I'm building an affiliate system for our website, and I obviously want to gain as much SEO benifit from it as possible. So I am wondering what the optimal solution is with regard to how an affilaite URL is tagged. After looking into it a bit more - I have come up with the following. 1/. Use an affilaite URL idendifier with a #
Affiliate Marketing | | James77
EG like www.mysite.com#123 2/. 301 redirect the affilaite URL to the "real URL"
EG www.mysite.com#123 301 -> www.mysite.com What do you think of this? Thanks0 -
Passing Google Analytics Variables Through Javascript?
Alright so here's my situation and hopefully someone can help... I want to be able to pass Google Analytics variables onto my affiliate links so I have some better conversion tracking data (not PPC traffic so no easy dynamic keyword insertion variables). I want to do something like this: User searches "keyword" in Google > User lands on mysite.com > search data is assigned to global variables that I can use in my affiliate link redirect script. afflink.com/?id=123&keyword=[GA keyword variable] Anybody know how I would go about doing that? I've seen other Non-GA tracking scripts do this but I can't figure it out here and it's driving me crazy! Thanks,
Affiliate Marketing | | drewhammond
Drew EDIT: Just figured it out after a lot of guess and testing... I'm not sure if the way I'm doing it is the fastest, most optimized way but it works. Solution: I can pull the GA cookie and break it down to retrieve the keyword using PHP. For anyone searching for this in the future, here's how I did it: $gacookie = $_COOKIE['__utmz'];
$keyword = substr(strstr($gacookie, 'utmctr='),7); ?> Then I can use the $keyword variable wherever I need it. I haven't actually tested this on a live site yet but everything is working fine as of right now. If anyone has a better solution please feel free to answer.0