Organic Links and Skimlinks Affiliate Program
-
Hi All,
If you're not familiar with Skimlinks, what they do is turn organic links into affiliates links so that publishers can earn commission through our affiliate program. Pretty much every SEO's nightmare.
myfashionlife.com/archives/2013/07/16/get-anne-hathaways-paper-denim-and-cloth-look/ anchor text "Floppy straw hat"
Looking at the source code the link looks clean, but as soon you click on it you get redirected via a 302 to our site. My questions is; is it just users that get redirect or is it the same for search engines?
Screaming frog recognises the link as a 200.
Are we losing all the link juice, or is it fine? I've have half a mind to kick them out of the program.
Cheers
-
The selling point makes sense and I could see how that would be true. But if you are not seeing an increase then it is not worth it, especially if your focus is on the organic traffic.
-
You are right, when I used screaming frog with Googlebot as the agent it didn't pick the link
-
Their selling point was that because bloggers would be rewarded for their links they'd feature our brand and products more often in their posts..... I don't think it is the case. We are just losing organic links and paying for traffic that used to be free.
I'll make sure they are taken out of the program.
Thanks for your help!
-
I think that Googlebot's going to recognize that this is a 302 and not a straight link.
-
Here is what I am seeing. When I view source and look at the link for Floppy Straw Hats I see the URL
http://www.surfdome.com/baku_hats_-baku_congo_hat-_volcano-108584?i
and this link shows me a 200 when I run through it directly. This is probably what Screaming Frog is doing. I would re-run the frog and set the user agent to Google Bot just to see what happens there.
Now when I view that link in the browser and I hover over it and right click the URL and copy I get
When you run this, you get the 302 redirect to the target page
If you scroll down to the bottom, you see the skimlinks JavaScript that is doing this manipulation. FYI it is also adding redirect a link to "Surfdome" at the end of that same line. This is not linked at all in the source code. You have a simple JS rewirte action going on there.
So the bot sees the regular URL and the human sees a redirect via JavaScript.
Depending on if you wear a white or grey hat, this could be considered "cloaking"
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en
"Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines."
This is not the traditional use of the redirect. You would often see a completely different page shown to the bot vs the human using JS versus your example of just showing a 2 different links on a page. That said, Google is reading more and more JS these days http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/11/get-post-and-safely-surfacing-more-of.html
Your issue is not about the 302 passing link equity, but if you want to get penalized for cloaking or not.
The other point that comes up is that since you are paying these bloggers to have this link on the site, I would call these paid links
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
I know you said, "these are organic links" we are now just paying for the referrals. Well, if Google finds that this is worth penalizing, then you have no one to argue with but yourself.
As I see it, you have 2 choices
-
No follow the links and do not use them for link juice but to pay for traffic.
-
Lose the redirects and use the links for ranking benefit (plus you can still get some traffic).
Honestly, seems like you were already getting organic links and traffic for free, so not sure why you would pay people for what you already had. I am sure this helped to get additional links, but you just need to consider the points above to see what is more important for your site.
Hope this helps!
-
-
It looks like it's turning them into 302's, so they're not the straight links you would like.
-
Chris, thanks for your advice, but I think we are going into a completely different subject.
-
Some of those links were created years ago. Created by the bloggers because they simply wanted to. We didn't request them or had any input on what that anchor text would be.
-
I suppose that when I wrote "That link, and hundreds just like that" could have been misinterpreted. There are hundreds of bloggers, linking to hundreds of different pages from our site, all with different anchor text. Again, 100% organic.
We didn't build those links or tell them what the anchor text should be (there are not two with the same anchor text). They were 100% organic links for years, but once Skimlinks joined our affiliate programs, SKIMLINKS changed all those links into affiliate links.
-
-
referral or affiliate, you set yourself up to be penalized if the links and anchor text aren't natural. You're actually better off with the 302'd skimlinks than hundreds of straight links with the same anchor text. I know this isn't what you're looking for but read through this from Yoast: http://yoast.com/cloak-affiliate-links/
-
Ok, maybe if I give some background it will be easier to understand.
That link, and hundreds just like that one used to be organic links, that bloggers created because they wanted to link to an specific product from our site. As soon as Skimlinks joined our affiliate program all those links became affiliate links.
As a result; sales that used to be attributed to the referral channel, are now attributed to the affiliate channel. But what worries me the most is whether those links are still SEO-friendly or not. In the source code they still look SEO-friendly.
-
What is it that you want get out of the non skimlink and what is it that the skimlinks are doing that you think you don't like?
-
They are not affiliate links, they are organic links. What happens is that the blogger uses a tool called Skimlinks (they are the affiliate) that turns organic links into affiliates.
Skimlinks gets paid by us and then they pay part of the comission to the blogger.
If I were to kick Skimlinks out of the program, the organic links would stop redirecting to our site via a 302.
In the source code there is no affiliate tagging in the links, it looks clean. I'm guessing the redirect is done using JavaScript. My questions is: does Google see a clean link, or do they also get redirected via 302 when they try to follow it?
-
You won't be getting any link juice through those links but you shouldn't be looking for any from your affiliates either, as best practice for aff links is that they are not followed links.
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
-
Breadcrumbs and internal links
Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Link building
ok mozers i have a few questions. I am starting a new seo campaign and i want to target traffic for "how to make money on autopilot" Question 1. when it comes to link building i have seen some articles saying that i should not send all of my links to my landing page at once but to send links to my backlinks then index then using tiered link building. Is this a must or not? will i get penalized if i build 20 targeted links to my landing page in 1 day, lets say 20, pr7-9 domains? or should i tier it out and link maybe 5 pr9 domains to my landing page, then link 10 pr5 domains to each of those 5 pr9 domains and maybe link 20-pr1 domains to each of those tiered 2 pr5 domains? eq: Tier 1 = 5 PR-9 Tier 2 = 50 PR-5 Tier 3 = 1,000 PR-1 Question 2. Is their a certain amount of backlinks i need to use in order to out do my competitor? or does it just matter on the metrics of my backlinks? and when it comes to indexing these links do i need to index just the 5 pr9 links? or do i need to index all of them? or should i just index the landing page through google webmasters tools and hope it indexes all connecting pages? will doing any of these get my landing page indexed faster in order to rank faster? Question 3. Types of link building. Ok i am targeting guest blogs, wordpress sites, etc to put a link on. Should i focus on smm 'social media marketing' as well? or can i just focus on the traditional seo tactics first? Question 4. Keyword research. ok so my blog post is 'how to make money on autpilot' and from my keyword suggestion tools it picked up a list of keywords suggestions to target. Competition ranges from low to high, search volume ranges from 10 to 1900 visitors per month, after organizing the most relevant keywords to add to my campaign should i target each of the these keywords by creating a link building campaign for each one and target it to my landing page or use it as my 2nd or 3rd tier? those are the questions i really have for now. Here is my blog post http://www.vemomedia.com/how-to-make-money-on-autopilot/ Please feel me in on what i am needing to do in order to get some ranking and on how to run a link building campaign the correct way. Thanx in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djgbshows1 -
Link Building Strategy?
If I use unique content written from writers & post it to good sites (free blogs, bookmarking, directory, articles sites, etc.) having nice good cache, good PR, different IP's do i still have a chance of get hit by Spam actions of google? Planning to do like just 30-50 a month all with unique content or say 1 unique content then re-written & used not more than 3 times. If not this then What else would you suggest? One more thing to add up, like i have 1000+ pages out of which i have like 80-90 pages that matters to me (important pages) then how do I spin the anchor text between all the pages. Should i spin them between 1000+ pages or use only 80-90 IMP pages. If the content is 300 words let say then how many anchor tags should i have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Linking and non-linking root domains
Hi, Is there any affect on SEO based on the ratio of linking root domains to non-linking root domains and if so what is the affect? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Sitewide footer links - bad or not?
Hi, Sitewide footer links, is this bad for SEO? Basically I see all the time the main navigation repeated in the footer, sometimes as almost something to just fill the footer up. Is this bad for SEO (im guessing it is) and can you explain why you think it is? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Bad links
Well just set up SEO Moz to find out someone thought it funny to build a load of links to our site http://bluetea.com.au/ with the anchor txt "Buy Cocks" .... PLEASE PLEASE let me know how much I should worry about this and how can I get rid of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intrested0 -
How should I handle these links?
I recently purchased a site which is in the same niche as my personal blog. MANY of the keywords which I want both sites to rank for, they are already ranking well for (Eg I rank #1 with one site and #5 for the other). I haven't started linking the two sites to each other yet (waiting to announce the acquisition before I do). I have 2 questions for you all... How powerful do you think linking between these sites could be? How do you think I should handle the linking between these two sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroAndJobu0 -
Increasing Internal Links But Avoiding a Link Farm
I'm looking to create a page about Widgets and all of the more specific names for Widgets we sell: ABC Brand Widgets, XYZ Brand Widgets, Big Widgets, Small Widgets, Green Widgets, Blue Widgets, etc. I'd like my Widget page to give a brief explanation about each kind of Widget with a link deeper into my site that gives more detail and allows you to purchase. The problem is I have a lot of Widgets and this could get messy: ABC Green Widgets, Small XYZ Widgets, many combinations. I can see my Widget page teetering on being a link farm if I start throwing in all of these combos. So where should I stop? How much do I do? I've read more than 100 links on a page being considered a link farm, is that a hardline number or a general guideline?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rball10