Sitewide links from affiliates. Good or bad?
-
We have 14 affiliate sites that have a sitewide banner linked to one of our pages. The banner link is "follow" and contains an alt text that includes a brand name and a keyword. Are these links harming us, or creating value?
We were hit by Panda 2.0 - do you think it might be the reason?
-
Other members have given good advice on nofollowing those links. I just wanted to answer your other question: It would be more likely that the Penguin algorithm update would affect you in regard to this specific issue. If you truly were affected by Panda it probably has something to do with the quality of your site, specifically the content, as opposed to off-site factors like followable affiliate links.
-
Agree with Jan. These are, in essence, paid links and Google has been very vocal about the fact that paid links should not pass page rank.
If these are banner ads with a campaign tag, Google may be aware that they are ads. To be safe, why not ensure that links from affiliates are 'nofollow'.
Lisa
-
Since these are affiliate links, I believe they should be marked as nofollow, otherwise they might be considered paid links and penalized. However, if the links are through one of the major affiliate networks, then I believe Google is already aware that they are affiliate links and won't pass the link juice. I'd consider it unlikely that you're being penalized if the links are through a big affiliate network (for example CJ or Linkshare).
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
-
Are CPAN (perl modules distributed hosting) links bad?
In the past, we contributed to CPAN and have a lot of links from mirror sites as a result. These are legitimate links but I'm wondering if they are holding us back. For those that aren't familiar, CPAN hosts code modules that are freely distributed for Perl programming. The code library is hosted on many mirror sites across the web in an effort to distribute the load of requests for modules when they're installed. The page that exists across multiple sites links a team member's name to our website. For example, http://cpan.mirrors.uk2.net/authors/00whois.html, http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/CPAN/authors/00whois.html and http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/cpan.perl.org/CPAN/modules/by-authors/00whois.html. Same content, different website. Thoughts? Is it worth pursing or disavowing?
Link Building | | knowmad0 -
AllTop Linking Me to Other Sites Feeds, Webmasters Reporting Lots of Broken Links
I submitted my blog to All Top awhile ago and something seems to be wrong with their feed. They're sending people to mysite.com/truth-o-meter.com/this-is-a-post. It's not just truth-o-meter either. I'm getting links that are supposed to go to all kinds of political blogs. As a result, I'm getting a ton of broken links reported on Google Webmasters. I couldn't find any real support option on alltop.com, and when I log in, there are no sites for me to manage. Instead, I resubmitted the site with the correct feed address and in the comments, I mentioned the problem. All I got was a message saying the site was rejected. I believe because I already added the site. But I'm thinking they didn't pay attention to the comments. (In fact the message may have gone through an auto-filter considering how quickly it was rejected.) Is there a way to solve this? Is this a situation in which I would use the disavow tool? If All Top continues to create bad links, how do I stop the issue once and for all? Thanks!
Link Building | | eglove0 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Should I ask sites that link to me to update links that redirect?
I have found some links to my site that go through a single 301 redirect to get to my site. Should I contact these websites to ask them to update the link, or is that not worth the time?
Link Building | | RCF0 -
Links to main landing category page or links directly to products
I have an ecommerce website and a manufacturer is providing links directly to my website from their products pages because they do not sell directly online. What is my best linking juice power for this situation:
Link Building | | dsmolinski
Manufacturer A has a number of different brands: brand1, brand2, brand3 and a number of different products in each of it brands. They are currently linking their individual products to my individual products on my website. My website is setup like this:
my.com/manufacture-A
my.com/manufacture-A/brand1
my.com/manufacture-A/brand1/product1
my.com/manufacture-A/brand1/product2
my.com/manufacture-A/brand2
my.com/manufacture-A/brand2/product1
my.com/manufacture-A/brand2/product2 What is the best practice for this situation:
--Linking manufacturer product to my product
--Linking manufacturer product to my associated brand page
--Linking manufacturer product to main manufacturer page
--or something else? Thank you and I can provide more details if need be. Denny0 -
Domain name holding pages link back, good or bad?
We are a web design and hosting company http://www.spiralsites.com But when we register domains for clients, or they take email only or a name is parked we have it using a holding page which can be seen as follows: http://www.jcevents.co.uk/ is this a good thing? Bad thing? Could it would it should it benefit our rankings? Should we do more to make it look less like our main site and actually try to use it better to help rank our other services pages?
Link Building | | spiralsites0 -
Adding NOFOLLOW to all external links, is this a good idea?
In the setting of a news site, with articles that often link to one or more outside sources, is it a good idea to rel="nofollow" all external links? Would this hurt link-building prospects? Of course, internal links would keep on passing link juice back and forth, but is there real harm in following external links? These would be links our writers and editors created themselves to reputable sources, blogs, etc.
Link Building | | VoxxiVoxxi0 -
Linking from Blogs
Hi I like to link from blogs on similar keywords on a regular basis but I am thinking about changing tactics as it can appear monotonous and un natural. What are peoples experiences in linking from blogs ?
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0