Organic Links and Skimlinks Affiliate Program

[Carlos-R]

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

[CleverPhD]

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.

[Carlos-R]

You are right, when I used screaming frog with Googlebot as the agent it didn't pick the link

[Carlos-R]

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!

[Chris.Menke]

I think that Googlebot's going to recognize that  this is a 302 and not a straight link.

[CleverPhD]

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

http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=207X327&xs=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsurfdome.com%2F&xguid=e3d44c6f62047018ab665c4fe5392990&xword=surfdome&xcreo=300001&xpid=875260&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.myfashionlife.com%2Farchives%2F2013%2F07%2F16%2Fget-anne-hathaways-paper-denim-and-cloth-look%2F&pref=

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

1. No follow the links and do not use them for link juice but to pay for traffic.

2. 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!

[Chris.Menke]

It looks like it's turning them into 302's, so they're not the straight links you would like.

[Carlos-R]

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.

[Chris.Menke]

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/

[Carlos-R]

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.

[Chris.Menke]

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?

[Carlos-R]

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?

[Chris.Menke]

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.