How should I deal with the affiliate URLs we create through our affiliate program?
-
Our website offers an affiliate program and every affiliate gets a link http://www.ourwebsite.com/?affiliateID.
Because we get many such links we use redirects to avoid duplicate content. Unfortunately we have 302 redirects set up and I want to make them 301. Many of our affiliates build backlinks using their http://www.ourwebsite.com/?affiliateID as the URL. If such links were redirected through a 301, would they pass any juice? Can our site get penalized by search engines for having backlinks to URLs that contain affiliate IDs, URLs that are 301 redirected to our homepage lets say?
-
It depends a bit on the scale - if you have a massive amount of affiliate links, they could get devalued, so some people have masked them in the past. The 302 does that, in a sense, but it also blocks the link-juice (or most of it). The 301 redirect would pass the link-juice, but there's a little more risk. If you're talking about 1000s of affiliate links and that's 90% of your link profile, I'd be careful. If it's just one part of your link-building strategy, it's probably not a big risk.
As Istvan mentioned, the canonical tag is another option. Visitors would still see the affiliate URL (which may or may not be ideal, depending on your own business model), but search engines would pass link-juice to the target page. In that case, I'd make the canonical page match the landing page (the home-page might not be a good bet) - it's a bit situational.
This post is a couple of years old, but it covers the basic options:
-
don't mean to high-jack the question, but is setting up affiliates this way a good seo strategy? does google see this as a cheap way to get backlinks, or does it see it as a legit way as it must be a "good site" if so many people are affiliates of it? Its and Idea i have to thinking of doing myself.
Btw i agree with Istvan, canonical and webmaster tools "ignore affiliate parameter" would be the way I would (will?) do it
-
Hi Sorin,
I would work this issue out trough Google Webmaster tools. It would be a possible solution to set up the parameter and tell Google to ignore it.
This way you wont have duplicate content issues because of the affiliate parameter in your links.
Another solution to this would be to insert in each and every page a canonical to itself (this way example.com/?affiliateID would have a canonical set up to example.com)
Another one: the solution that you have provided, but I wouldn't redirect all of them to the homepage. Just think as a user, you go on a link that should point to a product, then you get redirected to a homepage... what would you do? I would close the "tab".
301 and canonical will loose some of the link juice provided but still pass on somewhere close to 85-90%.
I hope this was helpful,
Istvan
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
-
Affiliate marketing for our Amazon Products ??
Hi Guys. Can any recommend or is it possible to build an affiliate marketing programme to generate sales from our Amazon product pages rather the the traditional way of generating sales through your own website ? Can anyone advise ? Or recommend any companies ? Thanks Gareth
Affiliate Marketing | | GAZ090 -
How to track Affiliate Clicks to Google Analytics
Hi, We would like to track the affiliate link clicks. Is there any way to track it from Google Analytic? Rajiv
Affiliate Marketing | | gamesecure0 -
How do you find Affiliate Links on your site that have not been nofollowed?
We've just signed up to an affiliate scheme because we were sending links to them because we thought their product was valuable to our users. So we now have to go through and nofollow all of these links over 100's of pages. Is there any way that do a crawl of the site to identify all links to a particular site and tell me what page they are on and whether they are nofollow/follow?
Affiliate Marketing | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Why do my Google Analytics campaign URLs not show up in reports?
Hi guys, I'm puzzled because of my affiliate campaign URLs not showing up properly in my Google Analytics reports. I'll try to explain what I did and I hope some of you can provide advice on how to proceed from there on. What do I want to do?
Affiliate Marketing | | NHA_DistanceLearning
Actually, what I want to do is quite simple. I tagged a few URLs for Google Analytics to show up in my campaign reports. I used the URL builder to do so. Example: http://www.nhad.de?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=zanox&utm_content=banner&utm_campaign=105x139. Is that the entire URL?
Uhm, no. Because of the active de-duplication script on our website, I need to put some characters in front of it: **www.nhad.de/affiliate.aspx?NETWORK=ZANOX&NEXTURL=**http://www.nhad.de?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=zanox&utm_content=banner&utm_campaign=105x139. Yikes. Yes, I know. What do I see?
Basically, when I paste the above url and run it in (for example) Chrome, only this shows up in my browser: www.nhad.de/?utm_source=affiliate. In my Analytics reports, the campaign URL is not recognised, just the source in my traffic report. The medium is indicated with 'not set'. What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to make my campaigns appear in Analytics? Best, Bas0 -
How to flag inbound affiliate links to Search Engines
Afternoon Mozzers, I was chatting to our VP of marketing earlier about one of our sites with a somewhat unhealthy looking link profile. This is primarily caused by the sector its in and the fact that lots of low quality lead generators / affiliates operate there, sending traffic to us in return for payment on accepted leads. Now, he recalled that there is a way to mark these inbound links, through a URL parameter he thought, as being affiliates and therefore should be ignored as we don’t want them misinterpreted as an attempt to manipulate our rankings. I have been doing a spot of research but can't find a straight answer. heres a few articles i looked at: blogaid, Yoast, Webmaster world and the Moz Q&A.The problem is all these are from the perspective of a site linking out and acting as an affiliate, so all deal with that page not losing PR. The two methods i have derived from this boil down to: No follow the links Use an intermediary redirect page and script which you can block from robots.txt So, back to our case - Are there any ways we can signal to Search engines, as the destination site, that these links are from affiliates (such as this URL parameter our VP had vague recollections off) or should i just get in touch and ask the sites to make them Nofollow? Thanks, Tom.
Affiliate Marketing | | Sarbs0 -
Recommended affiliate programmes (particularly UK-based)?
I'm starting a photography/travel/music blog and thought it might be a good idea to stick the occasional affiliate link in when it's appropriate. Does anyone have any recommendations? The related items would mainly be to DVDs, books and music, and sometimes something more travel specific like flights. Are the programmes from the likes of Amazon and ebay good, or would it be better to sign up to a system that covers many companies? It'll be my own CMS if that makes any difference. Thanks. 🙂
Affiliate Marketing | | Alex-Harford0 -
Can anyone help me find the broadband ISP affiliate program I need?
I have a couple sites that deal with broadband internet access, and I'm looking to monetize beyond adsense. I'd like to sign up for some affiliate programs from internet service providers like Charter, CenturyLink, Comcast, etc. I found a couple affiliate programs but I am having no luck at all figuring out the programs that so many other websites are involved with. In about every case, the user is able to enter in their address and then a search is performed, returning programs available at their location. The programs I've found just do the traditional ad click-throughs for a possible commission. Can anyone enlighten me what kind of programs they are using?
Affiliate Marketing | | bizzer0 -
Important question on affiliate links
The website I am working on is http://www.treadmillreviews.com. If you look at any of our affiliate links, they all have an href value of # or something that keeps the user on the page. However, there is an onclick="window.open('affiliate link URL')" code in them that has the affiliate link open in a new window. This website was set up to "hide" the affiliate links in essence this way. I just tried to make a PPC campaign in Google. Got shut down in about 20 minutes for being a "bridge page." Now, all of the content is original and not copied from anywhere. Supposedly Google could not see these links. Yet we got labeled how we did, and now I"m thinking it is causing rankings to hurt a bit. My question is, should I change how all of the links are set up? Should I make the href value be the affiliate link? It is a redirect like CJ.com uses. Should I nofollow those affiliate links? What is the best way to handle this problem? All help is appreciated.
Affiliate Marketing | | DanDeceuster0