What's the Best Way to Hide Redirects from Search Engines?
-
Hey everybody,
I like to use php redirects for affiliate links so they look better. I keep them all in the same directory. I read recently that these may hurt SEO.
A couple quick questions:
Is this the best way to redirect affiliate links?
Should I simply block the directory in robots.txt?
Any other suggestions from you SEO guyses and galz?
Thanks!
Jared
-
Hey William,
By "looks better", I have been taught that when people (especially marketers) hover over a link, they check out where it takes them by looking at the bottom left of the browser before clicking it.
The redirect makes the URL more friendly to click.
-
Hey Jared
I am guessing you are using
header('Location: http://www.example.com/');
Which triggers a 302 temporary redirection which as we know passes nothing.
I have seen this on other bespoke sites and even on some older shopping cart scripts etc and never seen it hurt anything from an SEO perspective. That's not to say it doesn't, but I have never seen it when it is used in this way. It's for an external link as well so I would not worry about it too much.
This is one of those things, you want to preserve these links, I am guessing you want to hide them and this solution kind of meets your goals.
Really, if you had lots of links to pages you want to pass page rank or anchors into, or you were being linked to in this way, then the 302 would be a negative thing as no anchor or link juice is passed down the link. But, in this instance, I really can't see it doing any harm.
Happy to take a look at the page and provide some more targeted feedback if it helps.
Marcus
-
Yeah isn't there tools to put the link through for that?
-
I think he means that by masking the link it makes hoplink theft more difficult, and also savy users would be less aware that the links are in fact affiliate links.
-
Well, if you don't want Google to see the list, then blocking the page with robots.txt is your solution.
But if it is a valuable list of resources it may be worth showing off that people use it.
In either case I'm not sure you want to use a php redirect. You could use No-Follow if you actually don't want to vouch for that site. But, I guess that all depends on what the site is.
I am a little confused by what you mean when you say "they looks better."
-
You should be using redirects as a means of masking your affiliation from the site visitor, not from search engines. I can't see anything wrong with using PHP redirects, but do them to prevent hoplink theft, as there's no actual SEO advantage since Google can see through redirects.
-
Just a guess from me here, but I don't think hiding redirects from a search engine would be a good idea at all. I mean, we know they really don't like us trying to hide stuff from them whether it's keywords or anything else. Not sure how that would work out, or what the chances of anything bad happening from it would be, but I would assume that if Google thought people were doing it, it would soon be in their webmaster guidelines as "Don't". But again, complete guess, I don't know enough about it to say anything for sure.
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
-
Weird 404 Error URL's - Where to redirect?
For some reason, I end up with a bunch of weird 404 error URLs like these. /KRVWZ/SVfSZ/ /wp-content/upl /MKWTZ/RKYQZ/ /wp-content/upload What should I do with them? Should I redirect them or is there a better way to do something with them. I do use Yoast Premium if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Best site Template, Structure, etc. for SEO
If I were to spin up a new site what do people recommend as the best template, services, etc. Do you have an example of the perfect structure, I want to point my team to an example page and say - This is perfect, do this but for our product (structure, content amount, etc) Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | Jamesmcd030 -
How to Structure URL's for Multiple Locations
We are currently undergoing a site redesign and are trying to figure out the best way to structure the URL's and breadcrumbs for our many locations. We currently have 60 locations nationwide and our URL structure is as follows: www.mydomain.com/locations/{location} Where {location} is the specific street the location is on or the neighborhood the location is in. (i.e. www.mydomain.com/locations/waterford-lakes) The issue is, {location} is usually too specific and is not a broad enough keyword. The location "Waterford-Lakes" is in Orlando and "Orlando" is the important keyword, not " Waterford Lakes". To address this, we want to introduce state and city pages. Each state and city page would link to each location within that state or city (i.e. an Orlando page with links to "Waterford Lakes", "Lake Nona", "South Orlando", etc.). The question is how to structure this. Option 1 Use the our existing URL and breadcrumb structure (www.mydomain.com/locations/{location}) and add state and city pages outside the URL path: www.mydomain.com/{area} www.mydomain.com/{state} Option 2 Build the city and state pages into the URL and breadcrumb path: www.mydomain.com/locations/{state}/{area}/{location} (i.e www.mydomain.com/locations/fl/orlando/waterford-lakes) Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | uBreakiFix0 -
Show or hide content in responsive design
Hi everybody! I'm trying to design the mobile version of an ecommerce with lots of filters in the menu (size, colours, material, etc.) I'd like to know if it's better for this kind of sites to use an m.version or a complete responsive design. I have analyzed my keywords and it's true that my website is founded in a really similiar way in both cases (desktop and mobile) so I wanted to design the whole site in responsive at first, but I'm afraid of being penalized if I hide content in the mobile version. This is why I'm thinking about making the responsive for desktop and tablets and the m. option as well, so as to hide menus and images. What's your advice? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | esthergvent0 -
Which redirect to use when redirecting to https page from http page
I have one form under https which is redirected from the regular http page. this site was not made by me and I am trying to understand if the way it was redirected using 302 redirect is a problem Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy0 -
Title Tag Not Relaying In Google Search
Our title tag is "<title>HCG</span> Diet - HCG Drops - Example Weight Loss - HCG Diet Weight Loss</title>" But in google it is only displaying "HCG diet" Reasons? What can I do to fix this? I'm trying to get this fixed asap, as it is our homepage that is being effected by it.
On-Page Optimization | | HCGDiet0 -
Building content pages, redirecting and linking
Previously the company had created some .HTML content pages around top shoe styles and top manufactures. One or two of these pages used to rank but have been neglected over the page 18 months. I want to build out new content round our top styles / top manufactures and I am wondering if I should use the existing HTML pages or create new pages that use our content management system. The .HTML pages can contain keywords in the URL, using our content management system, all URL’s are www.site.com/content/home/contentid=1234abcd. If we use the .HTML pages all content is managed manually. If we build out 6 to 10 pages, this can become a resource issue and may result in a bad experience for the website visitor. From an SEO perspective, does the benefit of having the keywords in the URL outweigh the manual management hassles? And if not, should we 301 all the HTML pages to the new content pages? And from a linking standpoint, I want these content pages to point to the new version of the top style. From a navigation standpoint, we also want to provide access to all styles from the manufacture. Should we nofollow the links to all styles?
On-Page Optimization | | seorunner0 -
Best SEO structure for blog
What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0