What's the Best Way to Hide Redirects from Search Engines?
-
Hey everybody,
I like to use php redirects for affiliate links so they look better. I keep them all in the same directory. I read recently that these may hurt SEO.
A couple quick questions:
Is this the best way to redirect affiliate links?
Should I simply block the directory in robots.txt?
Any other suggestions from you SEO guyses and galz?
Thanks!
Jared
-
Hey William,
By "looks better", I have been taught that when people (especially marketers) hover over a link, they check out where it takes them by looking at the bottom left of the browser before clicking it.
The redirect makes the URL more friendly to click.
-
Hey Jared
I am guessing you are using
header('Location: http://www.example.com/');
Which triggers a 302 temporary redirection which as we know passes nothing.
I have seen this on other bespoke sites and even on some older shopping cart scripts etc and never seen it hurt anything from an SEO perspective. That's not to say it doesn't, but I have never seen it when it is used in this way. It's for an external link as well so I would not worry about it too much.
This is one of those things, you want to preserve these links, I am guessing you want to hide them and this solution kind of meets your goals.
Really, if you had lots of links to pages you want to pass page rank or anchors into, or you were being linked to in this way, then the 302 would be a negative thing as no anchor or link juice is passed down the link. But, in this instance, I really can't see it doing any harm.
Happy to take a look at the page and provide some more targeted feedback if it helps.
Marcus
-
Yeah isn't there tools to put the link through for that?
-
I think he means that by masking the link it makes hoplink theft more difficult, and also savy users would be less aware that the links are in fact affiliate links.
-
Well, if you don't want Google to see the list, then blocking the page with robots.txt is your solution.
But if it is a valuable list of resources it may be worth showing off that people use it.
In either case I'm not sure you want to use a php redirect. You could use No-Follow if you actually don't want to vouch for that site. But, I guess that all depends on what the site is.
I am a little confused by what you mean when you say "they looks better."
-
You should be using redirects as a means of masking your affiliation from the site visitor, not from search engines. I can't see anything wrong with using PHP redirects, but do them to prevent hoplink theft, as there's no actual SEO advantage since Google can see through redirects.
-
Just a guess from me here, but I don't think hiding redirects from a search engine would be a good idea at all. I mean, we know they really don't like us trying to hide stuff from them whether it's keywords or anything else. Not sure how that would work out, or what the chances of anything bad happening from it would be, but I would assume that if Google thought people were doing it, it would soon be in their webmaster guidelines as "Don't". But again, complete guess, I don't know enough about it to say anything for sure.
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
-
Hiding elements of the page
Hi, Does hiding elements of the page have a negative effect on SEO? The reason I ask is I am using a Wordpress theme however in options if I disable a certain element of the theme that is printed on the page it simply hides it from the user using CSS but it still exists in the code. Could the search engine see this as bad? E.g. like you are trying to keyword stuff by hiding keywords in the page? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | mdeluk1 -
Author avatar in homepage search result
Hello I actually see some websites which the owner don't want to display the google+ profile avatar when homepage is displayed in search result, except blog posts only For example: yoast.com Is it a good practice in wordpress? or we must claim authorship & display the google+ avatar for all pages & all posts? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dklong23450 -
My company's product is referred to by two different names (SVN and Subversion). When cleaning up our Title tags, is it OK to use either name to keep the title tags around 70 characters?
I am cleaning up title tags that are too long or not correct. In our title tag we reference our product (a version of OSS source code). This product is often referred to as both SVN or Subversion. When writing Title tags is it OK to use one or the other depending on the length of the Title Tag? For instance: Contact Us | Free SVN & Git Hosting | Bug & Issue tracking | CloudForge vs **About CloudForge | Free Subversion & Git Hosting | Bug Tracking ** | |
On-Page Optimization | | CollabNet0 -
How to properly remove pages and a category from Google's index
I want to remove this category http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ and all the pages in that category (e.g. http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/7386.html ) from Google's index. I used the following string in the "Reomval URS" section in Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/* is that correct or I better use http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ ? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | VinceWicks0 -
What's the best way to name an image for SEO?
Hi Guys,
On-Page Optimization | | krseo
I'm thinking about images and SEO. What's the best way for naming and using images in HTML Code? For example: Image-Name: keyword-keyword2-keyword3.jpg or keywordkeyword2keyword3.jpg ?
How many Keywords should I use max for a picture? And also do you use the alt tag as description of the image and the title tag or only the alt tag? If you use the title, what do you use it for? Maybe someone can copy a HTML-Code example for me 😉 Thank you 🙂
Alex0 -
Search form another country
I am searching from india. what is the way so that i can search as if i am searching from US ? OR UK ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050 -
301 redirects / clean urls
hello everyone, we moved our site to a new platform that has url rewrite feature. we are building out a spreadsheet of the old aspx urls and the corresponding page on the new site. my dev tells me that its not important to redirect the old page to the new "clean url" page which sounds a bit odd to me ..example below. okay. so he says its the same difference to 301 redirect this url: http://72.3.181.97/catalog/DesignerDogBeds.aspx to this urls: https://www.k9electronics.com/product.php?productid=3474 instead of this clean url: http://www.k9electronics.com/designer-dog-beds/ can anyone give me any feedback on this? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron0 -
How to organize a Knowledge Center for best SEO?
Hi, My Client is facing pushback from her company on separating assets into different pages (webinars, press releases, by-lines, etc) vs lumping them all together in one page. We need to define the SEO benefits of doing this in an organized fashion vs one big lump. Can you help? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | ScratchMM0