Do affiliate links count for Google?
-
Hi, I have been reading about affiliate links - links with a tracking code in the URL (i.e.: www.xxx.com/?aff=123456) and I can't find a definitive answer. Does Google count them as natural links or maybe they do not even pass any link juice?
And if they don't, what if I get a natural link from a website (without tracking code) and later that website becomes my affiliate? Would the first link still count?
I guess that there can't be any certainty about all this, but I would love to know your expert opinions
Thanks!
-
Again, not totally clear cut. Depends if the links are within the content, site wide, above or below an affiliate link, withing one or several pages.
I would err on the side of assuming that if there's affiliate and non-affiliate links then the clean links won't count for as much.
-
Wow! Thanks for this answer! But I still have one doubt: if an affiliate gives me a mix of affiliate links and clean links, would the clean links still count?
-
Fairly complex to get decent value out of affiliate links and technically I believe Google wants you to nofollow affiliate links, so gaming them for more positive SEO value could wind up with you getting in a little trouble.
The blog post Atul linked to is a good place to start, however I think if you were really serious about it there's a lot more depth you can go into.
In your example you can start by ignoring the aff parameter in webmaster tools and I assume you'll canonicalise the page.
It's possible to get affiliates to give you a clean link, then drop a cookie on users based on the referral header. This has the advantage of requiring no work on the affiliates side (they simply link to anywhere on your site as normal) but it's very easy to game for other affiliates. If there's money to be made a lot of people are going to take advantage of it. A variation on this is you can use # links and then interpret them server side (so affiliate links to example.com#aff=123456 convert to example.com/?aff=123456). Again that's game-able.
A possibility would be to set up affiliate landing pages that override cookies (a force vs a default), so that affiliates can link into this page cleanly and visitors get cookied at that stage. You would then have a stripped down navigation to sections of your site you most wanted to promote. You'd have to make this page accessible to search engines though, which means there's a possibility of that page showing in SERPS. On the other hand it could also give you a chance to be in the SERPS for their brand if you do it right
Another, somewhat dodgy (all right, actually dodgy), thing you can do is look at a list of your affiliates and see who's not bringing in many sales, especially those with high traffic. You can then offer to match or beat their affiliate payments for their continued endorsement with a clean link.
Assuming you manage to impliment a decent solution something you'll need to overcome is that affiliates are increasingly masking their affiliate links to keep the link juice. See this post for an example - http://yoast.com/affiliate-links-and-seo/ - though it's possible to do the same thing without the plugin. No real solution to this beyond interacting with the affiliate and discussing it with them.
Also affiliates may not be too happy about providing SEO friendly links as it makes it harder for them to rank/earn. One solution could be to offer additional rewards for SEO friendly links over traditional links.
A small negative to solving this if you have a widespread affiliate program is that you could suddenly have a lot of low value links pointing into you, diluting to a degree some of your stronger links. I'm not saying that getting a whole bunch of links could ever be bad, per se, but, depending on your niche, I still think some affiliates operate in 'bad neighbourhoods'. I wouldn't worry about it too much, but if possible roll these links out instead of flipping a switch.
The only real concern is if you then revert or change your affiliate program. I'm 95% sure Google doesn't care if you pick up a whole bunch of links quickly, but if you LOSE a whole bunch of links quickly you're going to set off some alarm bells. Although I could be significantly overthinking your question, just the sort of things that go through my mind
If I think of anything else I'll update.
-
There is a post at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links
This should be helpful.
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
-
Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google
Hi, Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc. After that, to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios: 1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link. 2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link. Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement. Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us. How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website. Thanks
Link Building | | SameerBhatia2 -
Getting a sitewide links from one domain as oppsed to few links from certain pages, a good, bad or horrible idea?
Hello, I have a website that is performing really well in Google for country specific Real Estate Website. I have had this site for just about 2 years and I have 4600+ indexed pages, and about 50 of my main keywords appear in top 10 results on Google. I have now started a second site with a brand new domain, its only about 2 months old. This one is a Travel website and again its country specific (same country that real estate website is performing well in) and since its still building up the content and has barely a couple of backlinks, I am thinking of adding a linkback to it from my Real Estate Site. Is it a good idea to add a site wide link back from header section of the real estate website to my travel website? Both sites has same country and most of the keywords in both relate to this country. Or will I be better off adding a few text links from few pages with best Page Authority? Or - do you suggest that I do not link the two at all? Both sites are hosted on different servers, with different IP's and one is on windows server created in asp.net while another is a magento site. Any advidce / insight will be much appreciated and thank you in advance.
Link Building | | waituk_sanjeev0 -
How do I find links that link to several competitor sites?
I want to find linking pages that link to several of my competitors. Those are likely to be lists of tools I can also add my website to. My application is a dashboard tool/kanban board. So if I find a page linking both to say kanbannery.com and kanbanflow.com it will be likely to be a collection of links to kanban tools, ad my application can be relatively easy added. Magestic SEO has a "clique hunter" - is there anything similar in MOZ suite of tools?
Link Building | | kanbanchi.com0 -
I want to design SEO link building strategy for my website? Is wordpress.com, squidoo, tumblr, blogger, typepad - Good option for link building?
I am currently concentrating on 8 keywords, for e.g (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H). I will be writing blogs with 2 of any related keywords present in it. I am thinking to post 5 blogs on 5 different platforms as (wordpress.com, Squidoo, Typepad, Tumblr, blogger) respectively. I am thinking a strategy as: Monday: Keyword A,B on Wordpress/ C,D on Squidoo/E,F on Typepad/G,H on Blogger/ A,C on Tumblr. Tuesday:C,D on Wordpress/E,F on Squidoo/ etc.... and will rotate these keywords through out the week and the cycle restarts on Monday. The URL for every keyword will be different and relevant to that keyword. I need quick suggestion on this topic..Please..
Link Building | | Christain0 -
Link removel
When removing links should I be worried about bad links from websites that have already been deindexd from Google or should I think that since it is not in these index any more it cant do harm?
Link Building | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Is a no-follow link/sponsored link a good editorial link?
Ok maybe this is a dumb question. I really need some better, more quality backlinks pointing to my site. There is a site that has domain authority of 72, page rank 5 that is offering me a sponsored blog post. Do sponsored posts count as a good editorial link? Also what if they are no-follow (and how would I find out ahead of time), does that still give me link juice?
Link Building | | tutugirl0 -
How does it take after getting links discovered by google to see increase in rankings?
Five of my friends linked to my site from their website and updated their sites through Google Webmaster tools right after linking to my site. Though the Google spider crawled the site as soon as they updated their pages, it still took about three weeks for my site to get a bump in the serps from their links. Why does it take that long for links to kick in and what is the average time it normally takes to see an increase in ranking from links once Google discovers them? Thanks mozzers! Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Linking to Google Place page??
I'm wondering if anybody has tried and had success in improving search rankings by creating links to Google Place pages. What say you?
Link Building | | bdiddy0