Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
A link with "return false"- OSE sees as a No Followed Link
Hello, I couldn't find a clear answer to the impact on SEO for a link written in this way: [" class="expert_info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=) [Does the "return false" act as a "no follow"? I came across this in our link data in Open Site Explorer which lists these links all as "no follows." However, an engineer I spoke to said that it shouldn't impact search engine behavior. Any ideas? Thank you in advance! -Sarah K.](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=)
Link Building | | OneMedical0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Changing links
Hi guys i wanted you views on changing the anchor text of links. I have quality links coming in but with year terms such as 2012 in there, if i want to change them all to 2013 for example would it be badly seen by Google? I cant say i feel comfortable about doing it but they are my links and are related to our products. Any advice much appreciated.
Link Building | | pauledwards0 -
Domain Authority and nofollow links?
Hello, I'm wondering, are 'nofollow' links from websites with high domain authority beneficial? Would they boost our own DA? In essence, I'm wondering if there is added value (other than visitors clicking the link) to being linked to by a 'nofollow' link. Thanks!
Link Building | | yacpro130 -
Do links within imbeddable widgets carry link juice?
I'm dipping my toes into infographic design. On of my desired outcomes is to gain links by having other sites embed my graphic. I'm considering using Tableau's interactive data visualization software to do so; thus creating a widget, embedding it on my blog, and including the embed code for others to post. Is it possible to include a juice passing link in such an infographic? I know its possible to include links inside the tableau graphic but not sure if they have straight SEO value. If these links are not juice passing would it be better to go with a simple image link that passes value?
Link Building | | JesseCWalker1
