undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Link Building
  4. Best SEO practice to redirect affiliate link

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Best SEO practice to redirect affiliate link

Link Building
4
14
10.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • darkmediagroup
    darkmediagroup last edited by Sep 4, 2013, 12:03 PM

    Hello,

    I got an affiliate program on my website, that redirects the affiliate link to the main site like:

    site.com/ads/aff_code/  ->  site.com/ (The redirect is done using a 301 status code.)

    On the redirect process the site stores a cookie to track the affiliate sale.

    • Will Google and others SE follow this permanent redirect, transferring the relevance of this affiliate link to my main site? In other words, if an affiliate does something wrong (like spams), does the bad reputation will be transferred to my main site?
    • Is there a better way to do that from a SEO standpoint?

    Thanks,

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • fablau
      fablau @Everett last edited by Aug 2, 2016, 5:31 PM Aug 2, 2016, 5:31 PM

      Wonderful, thank you Everett.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Everett
        Everett @fablau last edited by Aug 2, 2016, 3:54 PM Aug 2, 2016, 3:54 PM

        I'll mark this as answered and will head over to the newer thread.

        fablau 1 Reply Last reply Aug 2, 2016, 5:31 PM Reply Quote 0
        • fablau
          fablau @Everett last edited by Jul 29, 2016, 8:14 PM Jul 29, 2016, 8:14 PM

          Thank you Everett, good points!

          I have opened another thread on this topic (I didn't expect you to reply on this old one!) where I am discussing about possible solutions for inbound affiliate links:

          https://moz.com/community/q/affiliate-links-dilemma

          It looks like my best solution would be to leave the way it is, maybe changing 301 redirects with 302? How would you suggest tackling this issue... or would you suggest just "ignoring" and leave the way we all have done, with a simple 301 redirect to the "clean" URL?

          Thank you again.

          Everett 1 Reply Last reply Aug 2, 2016, 3:54 PM Reply Quote 0
          • Everett
            Everett @fablau last edited by Jul 29, 2016, 7:06 PM Jul 29, 2016, 7:02 PM

            Fabrizo,

            It was a good point for you to bring up. The truth is, I don't know what Google's stance is on stuff like this these days because they constantly change it and you can read opposing things straight from Google in two or more different places. Also, I don't think Google cares about the user as much as they say when it comes to our sites because they make it difficult for us to rank well while also providing rich JS-based, interactive experiences. So thinking of the users on a big affiliate site, the best UX would be to show them the domain they're about to visit (e.g. Amazon.com) but Google doesn't like sites monetized this way (it seems) so we have to obfuscate what we're doing, which is B.S. since obviously the users like the site or they wouldn't be using it. This is all about Googlebot not keeping up with web dev technology. Maybe they should spend less time on self-driving cars and VR goggles and more time on that.

            Personally, I would not have a bunch of href links on my site pointing to an internal folder that is blocked in the robots.txt file. I "may" use javascript links and then obfuscate the javascript somehow, but Googlebot doesn't like when you keep it from rendering JS and you'll start to see errors come up in GSC and elsewhere that you're blocking content from being rendered. Does that impact rankings? Hard to tell.

            fablau 1 Reply Last reply Jul 29, 2016, 8:14 PM Reply Quote 0
            • fablau
              fablau @Everett last edited by Jul 29, 2016, 6:43 PM Jul 29, 2016, 6:43 PM

              Yes, thank you Everett, I read about that, and I agree with you that that would be a bullet-proof solution.

              I wanted just to check if what Google states now days would actually work, I couldn't see that mentioned on this thread before. But looks like you'd agree with Google on that, right?

              Thank you again!

              Everett 1 Reply Last reply Jul 29, 2016, 7:02 PM Reply Quote 0
              • Everett
                Everett @fablau last edited by Jul 29, 2016, 2:57 PM Jul 29, 2016, 2:57 PM

                Fabrizo,

                I was suggesting going through an intermediate domain, as opposed to just an intermediate page. There is more protection there.

                fablau 1 Reply Last reply Jul 29, 2016, 6:43 PM Reply Quote 0
                • fablau
                  fablau last edited by Jul 23, 2016, 7:23 PM Jul 23, 2016, 7:22 PM

                  I know this is a rather old thread, butI am wondering if anything is changed since this topic was discussed.

                  I see Google suggesting redirecting links to an intermediate page blocked by robots.txt to avoid schemes penalties:

                  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

                  Ideas on that?

                  Everett 1 Reply Last reply Jul 29, 2016, 2:57 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • topic:timeago_earlier,3 years
                  • darkmediagroup
                    darkmediagroup last edited by Sep 17, 2013, 5:02 PM Sep 17, 2013, 5:02 PM

                    It is clear to me now.

                    At the moment, I changed the redirect to 302 and blocked the /ads/ folder on the robots.txt. But I will surely proceed setting up a new domain for the affiliate traffic.

                    Thanks,

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Everett
                      Everett last edited by Sep 17, 2013, 5:01 PM Sep 17, 2013, 1:22 PM

                      Hello Henrique,

                      2. I mean putting /ads/ on a totally separate domain (e.g. youraffiliateprogram.com/ads/) which then redirects to yoursite.com. This way you can totally block that entire domain if you wanted to. When an affiliate links to youraffiliateprogram.com/ads/pageID the user who clicks on the link will get redirected to yoursite.com/pageID.

                      This set up has the advantage that you can block the entire affiliate program domain from being indexed in the robots.txt file if you wanted to, or you could try to use a 301 redirect and benefit from the links - until it stops working or you get penalized, at which point it you could block the affiliate program domain in the robots.txt, and/or change the redirects from 301 to a 302 rather quickly.

                      To answer your last question, yes you could simply change the redirect from a 301 to a 302 and that should solve the issue at the final landing page level, but since a lot of affiliates are still linking directly to your domain prior to getting redirected it could still cause issues. For example...

                      Affiliate A links to YourSite.com/ads/123 without using a rel nofollow tag in the link. This is still a link to your site from them, regardless of what happens next.

                      YourSite.com/ads/123 proceeds to 302 redirect the visitor to YourSite.com/123. The won't bass the pagerank on to your landing page, but it did nothing to stop the fact that you have a direct, followable affiliate link going to your site.

                      If you put in your Terms for affiliates that they have to use a nofollow tag in links to you, and you supply the nofollow tag in the code when they are "building" links from within your affiliate system, you should be ok. You may also want to block /ads/ in the robots.txt file just to be sure if you're going to take this route.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • topic:timeago_earlier,7 days
                      • darkmediagroup
                        darkmediagroup @Everett last edited by Sep 10, 2013, 11:20 AM Sep 10, 2013, 11:20 AM

                        Hello,

                        1. I will add the nofollow rel to our affiliate links, but this will only solve part of the problem. Many just grab the URL and build their own links.

                        2. You mean when someone hits site.com/ads/, gets redirected to subdomain.site.com and than to my main site.com? 301 redirects won't transfer the page rank to the page they are redirecting to?

                        What about changing the status code from 301 to 302 when redirecting from site.com/ads/ to site.com? Will this transfer the page rank? Any other status code that seems more suitable in this situation, like see other (303)?

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Everett
                          Everett last edited by Sep 5, 2013, 1:02 PM Sep 5, 2013, 1:02 PM

                          Blocking the /ads/ directory via the robots.txt file is not going to stop your site from being associated with affiliates who link to you. The best thing you can do in this case would be one of two things:

                          1. Ensure all affiliates are linking with a rel = "nofollow" attibute in the href tag (i.e. nofollow their links). You can provide the nofollow tag in the link code that they copy to make it easy for them.

                          Or

                          2. If you are trying to get some pagerank out of your affiliate links, but want to be able to react quickly in the event of a link-based penalty as a result of this practice, you could have affiliates link through another domain, which then 301 redirects to your landing page. This way you can kill off all the links simply be cutting the redirect (or changing it to a 302, or blocking Google from following the redirect with a tactic similar to the robots.txt block described above...) on the other domain instead of having to disavow a bunch of affiliate links, or instead of asking affiliates to updating their links.

                          Personally I'd go with option #1. You can combine that with the robots.txt block of your /ads/ directory too.

                          darkmediagroup 1 Reply Last reply Sep 10, 2013, 11:20 AM Reply Quote 0
                          • CleverPhD
                            CleverPhD last edited by Sep 5, 2013, 12:57 PM Sep 4, 2013, 6:19 PM

                            If you read the article I mentioned above, it really does not hide anything from Google, but you are clearly saying that these links are of no value.

                            I would use the 301 redirect.

                            In your case, yes that would save a step to just put /ads/ into robots.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • CleverPhD
                              CleverPhD last edited by Sep 4, 2013, 12:16 PM Sep 4, 2013, 12:16 PM

                              Google will follow a 301 and will transfer almost all the link equity/or lack of it.   Common practice is to 301 redirect through a page that is in robots.txt.  This prevents Google from following while moving the user along.

                              More here http://makeitrank.com/affiliate-links-seo

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • 1 / 1
                              1 out of 14
                              • First post
                                1/14
                                Last post

                              Got a burning SEO question?

                              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                              Start my free trial


                              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.

                              • See all categories

                              Related Questions

                              • Andy-H

                                Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?

                                link building whitehat

                                Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂

                                Link Building | Feb 15, 2022, 2:26 PM | Andy-H
                                0
                              • John8899

                                Redirecting dofollow, high-domain-authority links from one site to another: good idea?

                                I have two sites that offer help for freelance writers. The first gets almost no search traffic and is very low priority for me. The second is my main priority and gets substantial search traffic. The low-priority site has a significant number of dofollow backlinks from high-domain-authority sites. Is it a good idea to 301 redirect these links to similar/related posts on my high-priority site? Would this potentially boost the SEO of my high-priority site? Thanks for any help!

                                Link Building | Sep 24, 2018, 3:05 PM | John8899
                                0
                              • cceebar

                                Do links from such sites as TripAdvisor give any weight or support for SEO

                                And what about other sites like quora or other niche forums/blogs where one might leave answers, with a link to their profile, which has a link back to the owner's website? _Cindy

                                Link Building | Mar 31, 2017, 12:14 PM | cceebar
                                1
                              • JIMBO16

                                Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.

                                Hi,
                                I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim

                                Link Building | Jan 6, 2017, 7:06 AM | JIMBO16
                                0
                              • fersu

                                How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?

                                I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company.  I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO.  How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,

                                Link Building | Oct 13, 2016, 12:37 PM | fersu
                                0
                              • Personnel_Concept

                                Does link from a blog in Blogger.com helps in SEO ?

                                Do you guys think that adding good quality blogs to blogger.com and then getting a link from those blogs will help ?

                                Link Building | Nov 8, 2012, 9:36 PM | Personnel_Concept
                                0
                              • pauledwards

                                Changing links

                                Hi guys i wanted you views on changing the anchor text of links. I have quality links coming in but with year terms such as 2012 in there, if i want to change them all to 2013 for example would it be badly seen by Google? I cant say i feel comfortable about doing it but they are my links and are related to our products. Any advice much appreciated.

                                Link Building | Jul 26, 2012, 12:14 PM | pauledwards
                                0
                              • dignan99

                                Is it important to have a geo modifier for local SEO link building?

                                If anyone here is familiar with local SEO, you may have noticed that there are different local results for: "city + Keyword" and just the "keyword". When building links will you end up targeting both with a geo modifier in the link, or is it beneficial to build links without the geo modifer for the keyword?

                                Link Building | Jun 11, 2011, 3:48 PM | dignan99
                                0

                              Get started with Moz Pro!

                              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                              Start my free trial
                              Products
                              • Moz Pro
                              • Moz Local
                              • Moz API
                              • Moz Data
                              • STAT
                              • Product Updates
                              Moz Solutions
                              • SMB Solutions
                              • Agency Solutions
                              • Enterprise Solutions
                              • Digital Marketers
                              Free SEO Tools
                              • Domain Authority Checker
                              • Link Explorer
                              • Keyword Explorer
                              • Competitive Research
                              • Brand Authority Checker
                              • Local Citation Checker
                              • MozBar Extension
                              • MozCast
                              Resources
                              • Blog
                              • SEO Learning Center
                              • Help Hub
                              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                              • How-to Guides
                              • Moz Academy
                              • API Docs
                              About Moz
                              • About
                              • Team
                              • Careers
                              • Contact
                              Why Moz
                              • Case Studies
                              • Testimonials
                              Get Involved
                              • Become an Affiliate
                              • MozCon
                              • Webinars
                              • Practical Marketer Series
                              • MozPod
                              Connect with us

                              Contact the Help team

                              Join our newsletter
                              Moz logo
                              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                              • Accessibility
                              • Terms of Use
                              • Privacy

                              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.