Gaining juice from affiliate links
-
Afternoon Mozzers,
We run a basic affiliate program whereby we distribute banners and tools to affiliate sites who then link back to our homepage via these, often through a tool that incorporates an HTML link with our primary keyword term embedded. This banner/tool/link heads to our homepage, and will then incorporate that particular affiliate's unique code in the URL, eg. www.example.com/1A-265-GNH
Seems pretty standard practice so far?
So, considering this, that we include our primary keyword term in HTML in some banners, some also link to our homepage via an embedded image (and others then just work off cookies as per usual), can anyone hazard a guess, or know for certain, the beneficence of this as a link building means?
I ask in terms of trying to determine whether to continue punting our tools and banners as a decent link building opportunity, or concentrate more on other link building means.
Hope I've been clear enough, but am happy to elaborate if need be.
Cheers
-
Thanks, Heather. Getting a clearer picture now.
-
Hi Martin
The parameters in the URL are a big giveaway that this is an affiliate/paid link, so it's not a good idea to rely on these solely for your link building campaigns. There are ways round this by using cookies to store the affiliate details and keeping your URL clean, but your current system may not allow this.
As Ryan says, never have all your link building eggs in one basket. It's much better to diversify. This will look more natural to the search engines and hopefully mean any changes in Google's algorithm, should affect you too badly.
-
Thanks, Ryan.
Great link, too.
-
Concentrate on other link building efforts.
Affiliate links should be nofollow. If Google determines a link is related to an affiliate program, they will devalue the link.
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
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 do I easily no-follow my affiliate links?
Hi, I am in the process of setting up an affiliate marketing campaign for my site. I have done a bit of research and understand that it is safest in terms of SEO to add no-follow to the links from the affiliate sites. What is the easiest and simplest way to implement this?
Affiliate Marketing | | whiteonlySEO2 -
Person using expired domain and its links to drive traffic
Hi, I know about people using expired domains to drive juice to their primary site but what about people using AN expired domain as their primary site (totally changing that site into a trashy affiliate-marketing vehicle)? The site I'm looking at is thegunzone.com. It has, according to Semrush, almost 38K links. It used to be a legit 17-year-old firearms hobby site, and this is what it originally looked like: http://web.archive.org/web/20120213184627/http://thegunzone.com:80/ Here is its last page before it closed and the domain purchased by the affiliate marketer: http://web.archive.org/web/20170315084035/http://www.thegunzone.com/ It closed around February of 2017, and some affiliate marketer bought it and all its backlinks. However, all those backlinks, which were previously to various articles, are now directed back to those articles (which don't exist anymore) but the homepage, including Wikipedia links. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygonal_rifling At the bottom, in the 7th Reference, there's a link to an article called " "Learning About Shooting . . ." but if you click on the original link, it just goes to thegunzone.com homepage. Again, the site's totally different. And there are just thousands of such backlinks to former articles that don't exist anymore but are redirected to this schlocky site's homepage (and it's passing its juice through too). My question is this: this cannot be kosher with Google backlinking policies, right? Is this prevalent on the internet? Why hasn't thegunzone.com been found out and its rankings penalized yet? And how do I report him? I see tons of other sites using this basic strategy too on search results with various hunting keywords. (Disclosure: I do own a hunting/firearms blog, but I don't do any backlinking at all.) Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
Affiliate Marketing | | HandyWoman1 -
Affiliate Marketing in Australia
Hello Guys My website is BannerBuzz.com.au I'm Looking for Best Affiliate Marketing Websites In Australia and I've Researched and found the following Websites for the same. http://www.clixgalore.com.au/
Affiliate Marketing | | CommercePundit
http://www.jackmedia.com/
http://www.commissionfactory.com.au/ So I Need your valuable opinions on which website I can get maximum exposure in Affiliate Marketing. Please Suggest. Thanks in Advance. Thanks Prabhakar0 -
What impact do affiliate links have on SEO
We commonly reference engineering standards on our site (because half our products are known and searched for by those standard names) and have just signed up as an affiliate to an organisation that sell the standards. Which seems a nice match We're going through and making sure all are no follow now because that seems the general advice - but should we be doing anything else? Yoast says you should mask affiliate links - https://yoast.com/affiliate-links-and-seo/ - but that was from 2010. Matt Cutts is fairly clear on nonfollow - http://www.webpronews.com/heres-what-googles-matt-cutts-says-about-affiliate-links-and-nofollow-2012-06 - but not on whether it affects SERPS Does it? And what is the best way to handle it? This is a typical example of a page where we would have an affiliate link or two. http://www.oakleysteel.co.uk/fake-mill-certificates-en10168
Affiliate Marketing | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Links from Blogs and Forums
Hello Everyone, We are a small, local business in a city in Canada. We just got a new website and I am responsible for basically all of it, including the SEO. I was researching the back-links from our top-ranking competitor (another small, local business in our city). Here is their ranking: PA 40, with 441 Links from 111 RDs DA 30, with 6,864 Links from 116 RDs Here is the second-highest guy: PA 29, with 101 Links from 10 RDs DA 15, with 1,682 Links from 11 RDs As you can see, the top-ranking competitor's PA & DA are just about double his closest competitor. (Don't ask where we currently stand!) But, on closer examination, most of the links from our top-ranking competitor come from a local blog, where our competitor's ad appears in an advertisement on the sidebar. Each time they make a post, which is just about every day, our competitor gets a link. They also have a lot of links from a forum on a rock band's website. The original post was something about finding music, but the responses all have links to unrelated websites. This seems really, really slimy to me. What's going on?
Affiliate Marketing | | StillLearning0 -
Affiliate program in the education niche
Just curious if anyone knew of some good ones out there. Looking to try a couple out. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | astahl110 -
Where to look for relevant links
I and many others are targeting keywords such as "free iphone" or "free ps3" as part of incentive marketing schemes that offer rewards for referring new users to businesses. These often seem too good to be true but actually do work (if you don't get caught up in the spam sites). The thing is, what sort of link building should I be looking at once I have my site showing the users how the opportunity works and that it is a legitimate site. I don't want to have free iphone links placed where people may think I'm scamming them, so should I look at press releases, creating infographics or what? I look forward to hearing some of your ideas...
Affiliate Marketing | | GrassRootsSEO0 -
Affiliate network options?
I'm looking, for an affiliate network solution, that can provide not only conversions through affiliate marketing alone, but also as linkbait. What kind of tools do we have available? i remember reading a SEOMoz Blog about the best SEO tools of 2010, and i saw some affiliate options there. Looking to hear SEO community opinions on options like this.
Affiliate Marketing | | Blargh1230