Affiliate Schemes Aid SEO?

[__ajm__1979]

This is something me and my director are spinning round in our heads...

Alot of our competitor sites have a large number of incoming links. It seems these are coming from sites with similar service types.

In your experience do any affiliate link schemes carry value as regards back links and therefore Google Page Rank?

Any opinions in this regard would be greatly appreciated!


Cheers people!

[pricethat]

None at all, most affiliates will be very polite and decline any form of relationship with you on that basis. They are there to make money, not to give you a free seo trip. That said, that would be the polite response, i would think the greater majority would be "thinking"....

"you can get ****ed if you think i am linking to you so you can make sales without ****ing paying me anything for it"

Even if the only way was to direct link to you most affiliates would mask the links through redirects to ensure you dont get any benefit from it at all. be careful with those thoughts as well as it demonstrates to affiliates the kind of people behind the affiliate scheme as well if they are ready to accept lots of benefit without paying for it.

[3wdl]

Affiliates and SEO are two different things and should be treated that way.

As Pricethat said - Affiliates are not there to increase your rankings.

If you want to be a success online you should really look at all forms of marketing, affiliate marketing is just one piece of the jigsaw.

[__ajm__1979]

Thanks for the replies!

I had pretty much come to the conclusion that the affiliates were there for the business aspect alone, which is understandable!

[10k]

In terms of direct page rank value the answer would normally be no - most links through affiliate networks will be redirected through them so it isn't a direct link from the publisher site. However...

Any form of marketing which increases your exposure will aid your seo in the long term but it certainly shouldn't be your main aim. If affiliates are driving traffic to your site more people are exposed to it giving greater chance that they will link to it, be picked up by news sites message boards & forums etc which will help your inbound links (by a small amount over time), however this benefit will be small and should be part of a much bigger overall marketing plan.

My 2p