Affiliate Links - SEO value?

[directmarketingadvice]

I'm curious about something: if you have an affiliate link like

http="www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html?affid=2396"

would that have SEO value for the page www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html or would the ?affid bit remove that value?

Cheers,

Steve

[crossdaz]

I'm curious about something: if you have an affiliate link like

http="www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html?affid=2396"

would that have SEO value for the page www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html (http://www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html) or would the ?affid bit remove that value?

Cheers,

Steve

Yes it would have value but it would be short-lived. An affiliate link is a paid link and will be discounted eventually - it could take a while though depending on how obvious it was?

[herodigital]

the search engines will probably initially class it as a deep link, like ?c=2&id=42 then realise it's the same page without the query string so it may sustain devaluation that way

[terryuk]

I've seen a few sites ranking well with a majority of their links pointing to a similar page but haven't looked into it further! They will still hold value to the site itself, I sometimes see affiliates pointing links to a site and they gain no2 spots for the website name/product using their affiliate link. So maybe it is classed as a new page.

[I, Brian]

Clever companies have been setting up their own custom affiliate schemes and then 301 redirecting the affiliate links.

Still works - Moneysupermarket is an excellent example of this in practice.

[awebapart.com]

I'm curious about something: if you have an affiliate link like

http="www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html?affid=2396"

would that have SEO value for the page www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html (http://www.merchantsite.co.uk/red-widget.html) or would the ?affid bit remove that value?
They would be treated as two separate urls, two separate pages by the search engines. There is still some value, more so if the pages are deemed different with different content on them, but it is a lot better if they can be treated as one page. This can be done with 301 redirects as the best option, but perhaps "rel canonical" tags might work too.

The best option is to not have different urls in the first place. Affiliates could still be uniquely identified by http-referer, but this would only work if affiliates register what websites they are linking from, it wouldn't be prctical for many link drops in various forums, other people's blogs, tweets etc.

Another option is to have the one url, but also include a discount code unique to the affiliate. So affiliates can say "go to this website (link) and use discount code X123 for a 5% discount".

Hmmm, that's got me thinking about other advanced methods now! Having the one url, but uniquely identifying the affiliate by what they put in the anchor text or near the link, but that would mean the website has to automatically visit the referring website to find/crawl this information.

I'm sure there are quite a few clever methods, but in a lot of cases the most popular affiliate method is to go via a third party affiliate website, which doesn't help much in the way of SEO (unless the third party is doing some 301 redirecting).

[WeblinkPlus]

I don't know the answer and I doubt if anyone does.

Google wants to serve up pages that people want to see, and if a page has loads of affiliate links, then this implies it's popular, so I would guess the links would have an effect. How much, I'm not so sure...

Perhaps you could fool google by setting up the affiliate url as domian.com/affid. Some PHP code reads the affid and generates a unique page with affiliate information inserted and perhaps use article spinning technology to further uniqueify the page. e.g. 10 variations on each paragraph that the code randomly selects. Also have internal linking to pass some link juice back to home page.

The above is copyrighted and you must pay me a royalty if you use it :D

[paulus]

Clever companies have been setting up their own custom affiliate schemes and then 301 redirecting the affiliate links.
And you can redirect the links anywhere: instant deep links to those hard to reach places :D

[I, Brian]

And you can redirect the links anywhere: instant deep links to those hard to reach places :D

Exactly. :)

Note the small box at the bottom right for Moneysupermarket under "Sponsored features":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/7955173/Home-owners-pay-1700-a-year-more-for-fixed-rate-mortgage-deals.html

All keyword links, all 301 redirects for keywords, and repeated across a number of major publishers - turning affiliate links into a massive SEO link building campaign they don't have to pay for (though MS do send out link buying and article writing for links emails anyway - they are exceptionally aggressive with SEO, as part of an overall aggressive marketing campaign).

No wonder MS dominates so many major generic financial keywords.

Don't expect Google to act, though, unless:

a) people kick up a big fuss or MS crows loudly about it (Google Public Relations action required)
b) Lots of people do the same (unlikely because it's easier to get a custom Tradedouble, OMG, Buy.at account, and they're not cheap anyway)
c) Google runs out of other things to do

[crossdaz]

All keyword links, all 301 redirects for keywords, and repeated across a number of major publishers - turning affiliate links into a massive SEO link building campaign they don't have to pay for (though MS do send out link buying and article writing for links emails anyway - they are exceptionally aggressive with SEO, as part of an overall aggressive marketing campaign).



A link from the Telegraph isn't worth diddly squat - for very good reason.
Nice theory though :)

[I, Brian]

It's simply an example of what they're doing.

[crossdaz]

It's simply an example of what they're doing.

The danger with these kinds of examples is that someone might think if a big name is doing it then it's something they can do too?

The consequences of getting found-out can be devastatingly different for a small firm compared to a big one with thousands of good organic links already in place.

[paulus]

The consequences of getting found-out can be devastatingly different for a small firm compared to a big one with thousands of good organic links already in place.
What is there to be "found out"? Do you mean that if you have affiliate links to offers that have "expired", you shouldn't redirect them? Sorry, it's a bit early for me :)

[awebapart.com]

Note the small box at the bottom right for Moneysupermarket under "Sponsored features":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/7955173/Home-owners-pay-1700-a-year-more-for-fixed-rate-mortgage-deals.html

All keyword links, all 301 redirects for keywords, and repeated across a number of major publishers - turning affiliate links into a massive SEO link building campaign they don't have to pay for (though MS do send out link buying and article writing for links emails anyway - they are exceptionally aggressive with SEO, as part of an overall aggressive marketing campaign).

No wonder MS dominates so many major generic financial keywords.
Nice example, thanks.

That last link on that page bottom right, the utilities link to a telegraph subdomain which then 301 redirects, strikes me as the one that google might find the most suspect.

I would also question whether they are actual affiliate links or simple paid advertising links (with codes in there for tracking purposes), in which case they could all be suspect in google's eyes as obvious paid for links.

[I, Brian]

The danger with these kinds of examples is that someone might think if a big name is doing it then it's something they can do too?

Well, it's doable, but probably takes a degree of resources and technical expertise that most companies will not cater for.

Aaron Wall used to do it for SEO Book, until he bragged about it in public, and Google promptly cut his juice from it. :)


I would also question whether they are actual affiliate links or simple paid advertising links (with codes in there for tracking purposes), in which case they could all be suspect in google's eyes as obvious paid for links.

Certainly suspect, but not clear cut, and that makes it harder to act. And, considering some of the really poor and even more suspect link building from rivals in the financial services sector, no wonder MS can get ahead.

MS have a diversified link strategy anyway, and a very strong marketing ethic. And they get the internet. No wonder they're strong in SERPs.

2c.

[awebapart.com]

The closer I look at those moneysupermarket links on the telegraph, the more they look to me like suspect (and possibly black hat).

For instance, the credit cards link, does not redirect to the page MSM is targeting for credit cards ( /credit-cards ) but to a different page (/cardsp/default.asp) which Google isn't indexing. The page is more of a landing page with little SEO value, and most of its links go back to the telegraph.

But, here's the crux, if you request that page (/cardsp/default.asp) without a http-referer (or with a googlebot referer as googlebot does), MSM serves up another 301 redirect to /cards, then another 301 redirect to /credit-cards - the page it is targeting for that term (and currently doing rather well with).

So MSM might be serving up different pages to users and different pages to google for SEO benefit, which could be classed as either deceptive redirects, cloaked pages, or doorway pages in Google's spam report.
MS have a diversified link strategy anyway, and a very strong marketing ethic. And they get the internet. No wonder they're strong in SERPs.
Perhaps in this particular case they are veering a little too close, or crossing over the grey hat SEO line.

They might get internet marketing (possibly in a risky way), but I also think they get marketing in general and that for their market it's not all about the internet (e.g. TV ads).

[crossdaz]

Perhaps in this particular case they are veering a little too close, or crossing over the grey hat SEO line.



More likely a case of ranking well despite the jiggery pokery rather than because of it?

[awebapart.com]

Question is, for a site that is already ranking well, if it then starts undertaking some jiggery pokery, and google finds out and doesn't like it, will google then start penalising the site as a whole?

[crossdaz]

Question is, for a site that is already ranking well, if it then starts undertaking some jiggery pokery, and google finds out and doesn't like it, will google then start penalising the site as a whole?

I don't think so unless it's really affecting their rankings overall. As per my earlier post, it's easy for big players to do this kind of thing as having a hundred or so links cancelled out makes only a very minor difference and is therefore worth the risk. .

[awebapart.com]

Google did penalise BMW for doing something similar, offering different content to users and search engines for SEO purposes (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/).

[crossdaz]

Google did penalise BMW for doing something similar, offering different content to users and search engines for SEO purposes (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/).

Yeah it can happen - but they were publicly invited to do something about it. I doubt you or I would be so fortunate?