Which affiliate programs pass the best SEO value through their links?
-
How good is Google at detecting the affiliate nature of those links? How does this rate as a linkbuilding strategy?
-
Hello Menachemp,
Google is really good at detecting affiliate links, especially from any known network. To answer your question in the title, the best SEO value would come from a home-grown affiliate program that doesn't use any of the link footprints or networks that others are using.
In terms of a linkbuilding strategy you'd be paying for links so essentially it could get your entire domain in hot water. Getting random affiliates to remove all of those links after the fact would be a nightmare. So unless you are ok with the very real possibility that you'll have to scrap the domain and start over again somewhere else I'd stay away from it as a linkbuilding strategy.
Some people run those links through another domain first and then 301 them to the destination. That way if Google figures out what you're doing you can just dissconnect the redirects and remove all of those links with the flip of a switch in the middle-domains' htaccess file. Google knows about this tactic as well, and I would be very surprised if they haven't addressed it already, or very soon.
This isn't a whitehat / blackhat or a moral thing for me. It is a matter of risk tolerance. In this case the pay-off would have to be big and fast for me to have enough risk tolerance to chance burning a legitimate business down. People have been trying this tactic for at least five years (that's about the time when I first thought of it myself, though I'm sure others were doing it long before that) so this is nothing new, especially to Google. Keep that in mind when planning it out, and get someone to build it for you from scratch if you're going to do it.
Good luck!
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
-
Does redesigning a website affects SEO results?
We have a website and we are getting good traffic to it. Now its ranking high for most of the potential keywords even if it is not at all SEO friendly. We are planning to redesign it. Will that affect the SEO Ranking?
Affiliate Marketing | | yenu0 -
What is the right way to link to your main site?
Hi, we have a system for tracking the leads that comes from a specific affiliate website. each affiliate has a unique tracking code. not only for affiliates that work with us but also for the SEO team has an affiliate tracking code so our bosses can track the leads and traffic that come from the activity of the SEO team. this means, links towards our website look like: www.mydomain.com/?t_src=campaign&t=AFF&t_cre=links&A=371 www.mydomain.com/?A=371 I have few questions about this: 1. This is the right way to link to my company site? How dose google crawl those link? It's can harm the link value? 2. What is my option to show my boss all the traffic / leads that our seo team brings to the site trough Google Analytics? Hope to get your support. Thanks in advance.
Affiliate Marketing | | JonsonSwartz0 -
How much SEO benefit am I getting from 'affiliate' links?
Hi all, We run lots of different campaigns with affiliates and as such they have links on their websites pointing back to ours. I was keen to know how much 'link-juice' these kinds of links are passing back to our websites or how much SEO benefit we are getting from them. The links have "?=affiliate" in them. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!! Many thanks! Rob
Affiliate Marketing | | RobertHill0 -
Affiliate links and Panda
Hello all, my question relates to the recent panda changes and the subsequent impact on pages with affiliate links. I have a hub of pages on my website talking about parcel delivery. Each page has unique, quality content and up until about 3 weeks ago they were starting to achieve strong rankings. We then decided to add some affiliate links (just 3) on each of the 5 parcel related pages we have. The rankings for each of these pages have tanked completely; rather than top 20, we're now outside of the top 100 for all of them. When we noticed this we masked the link, changing it to domain.com/index/affiliate; we also no followed the link. Alas this has had minimal effect in restoring the rankings. What i'm now thinking of doing is removing the affiliate links from the parcel landing pages altogether and instead providing users with a no followed link to another page within the site upon which we would have the affiliate links. This page would also be no indexed as well. My question is: Is this a good idea and if so will it restore my previous rankings over time, or have those pages (as a result of the affiliate links) been permanently down graded?? Any assistance would be gratefully received!
Affiliate Marketing | | danielparry0 -
Hiding Affiliate Links
Hello, Currently I'm developing a website that will contain a lot of affiliate links (5000). This is because I'm going to compare the prices of a lot of products. The visitor can go to all websites (my advertisers) that sell these products via affiliate links. My question is how to hide these affiliate links. I've read lots of solutions, like: cloaking, rel=nofollow, using JavaScript, 301 redirects. I would like to know what the best solution is to deal with these affiliate links for SEO. Regards, Martijn
Affiliate Marketing | | MartijnWijbenga290 -
Link exchange
Folks I just thought to myself that this forum must be filled with lovely SEOs who are busy working on multiple clients.... I'm very new to the industry myself... about a month into it 🙂 Any-hoots I was just wondering if anybody is working in a category that may be suitable for a link exchange with http://bluetea.com.au/ .... Please let me know
Affiliate Marketing | | PHDAustralia680 -
In search of the perfect SEO affiliate ID'd URL
Hi, I'm building an affiliate system for our website, and I obviously want to gain as much SEO benifit from it as possible. So I am wondering what the optimal solution is with regard to how an affilaite URL is tagged. After looking into it a bit more - I have come up with the following. 1/. Use an affilaite URL idendifier with a #
Affiliate Marketing | | James77
EG like www.mysite.com#123 2/. 301 redirect the affilaite URL to the "real URL"
EG www.mysite.com#123 301 -> www.mysite.com What do you think of this? Thanks0 -
Promoting an Affiliate Scheme
I have to promote an affiliate scheme, and am drawing up a list of techniques that I can use to get people interested and sign up to it. Currently I have: Promoting the scheme in any article promotion. Identifying relevant websites to the scheme, and contacting them directly. Networking in affiliate forums and communities. Promoting on Facebook and Twitter. Possibly producing a video reviewing the scheme and posting it onto YouTube and other video sites. Can anyone think of any other techniques that I could try using? Cheers.
Affiliate Marketing | | speedyseo0