Nofollow affiliate links
-
I am setting up an affiliate program using software built in to my shop already (x-cart). The links generated by the software do not have the rel="nofollow" in them. I'm assuming they should have?
When looking at Amazon, there must be millions of links out there pointing back to Amazon and all those links are followed back to them for link juice.
Am I missing something? Surely best practice here is to re="nofollow" so you're not seen to be manipulating Google PageRank?
-
I would always nofollow any affiliate links. You can send them through an internal redirect first, which can be blocked in the robots.txt file. That's mainly if you just don't want them to know it's an affilaite link at all, and helps with internal tracking.
Either way, don't give Amazon.com followable affiliate links.
-
This was truly a very well answered question. I had never read the Yoast post, but it is great. Well done and Thank You.
Robert
-
I wish! The affiliate program is new. It's an unknown entity for me. 7 figures is just normal sales. The in-house software has the capacity to allow the blogger to choose a product and create custom code and a thumbnail for it to put in their site, like Amazon does, but they'll have to add the nofollow by hand or I will need to pay to have the software modified, which is what I'll probably end up doing. I have no desire to get a manual penalty for manipulating page rank and I'm surprised it's not a part of the software already.
-
If you're an Amazon affiliate it is.
By having millions of links to their website where people are being paid to do so, they're encouraging the manipulation of Google PageRank. I don't see why the rules should be any different for them because they're reputable. My site is reputable too. It's an online store with a 7 figure annual turnover, I'm just not 'Amazon'.
So I was just curious as to why they take the link juice from their affiliate links when the rest of us are encouraged to nofollow them. Everything I have read so far suggests that if you run an affiliate program, all the links where people link back to your store should be nofollow, and if you're running a blog that's got lots of affiliate links on it, you should protect your blog by adding nofollow links to all your advertising.
My in-house software doesn't nofollow by default, so I'm either going to have to get it re-written or give my affiliates manual instructions on how to alter their code. I chose not to use ClixGalore or anyone else like that so I don't have to pay their fees.
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a site that is a year old, we have been building backlinks organically - probably around 50 or so - then almost overnight we had100s of spammy links. Screenshot here: https://ibb.co/cijiub My questions: Should I disavow these? What happens if I don't disavow these? Can I work out where they came from? If I disavow a few of them, is this a token offering to the Google Gods that will lower my risk of being penalised? Thank you. cijiub
Link Building | | Bee1591 -
Link text
Can anyone give me any advise regarding anchor text in back links on external sites. I have about 8 bloggers reviewing our products on their sites. When they link to our site, they either use the words of our company name or something like “click here” as the words in the link. There are a few key words that we are wanting to improve for so should those words be made as the live link on their site?
Link Building | | Hardley1110 -
Reciprocal links
Are they worth anything, if they are from relevant sites? I'm I better off avoiding linking back wherever possible?
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Removed Link
After I have removed a link, how long does it take for it to be reflected in Google WMT?
Link Building | | raph39880 -
How Much Should I Worry About NOFOLLOW Links?
I've got many unnatural backlinks that have the NOFOLLOW tag. How much should I worry about those links? Could Google penalize my website for these links?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
Link Building | | tom14cat140 -
Should I unify my links?
Checking at opensiteexplorer.org I can see that: mydomain.com has has DA 26, linking root domains 1, total links 22 www.mydomain.com has DA 26, linking root domains 31, total links 89 The 22 links to the non-www domain come from the same site, which I would be able to convince to change to the www domain. Is it worth doing it? Will it add up to better DA? Thanks J PS: with only 32 root domains I think I have to do some serious link building...
Link Building | | TIBA0 -
Different Link Titles Linking to the same page
So I'm doing a lot of link building but my question is how do search engines treat different link titles to the same page. For example, my main page is www.musillawfirm.com If I have 20 links from 20 sites linking to it as Melbourne FL DUI Lawyer and 20 more linking as Melbourne FL immigration Lawyer and More linking as Cocoa FL DUI lawyer etc... what happens? Do the search engines just rank me higher for all the terms or would it be better to always just link to separate landing pages? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | musillawfirm0