Thread: Affiliate inbound links and page rank

Not answering your question but this client of yours, there not planning on setting an affiliate program up with the main point being to boost PR is it?

I'm not suggestign that is the case, just that was the first thought that came to my head when I read your post. I am sorry if I am way off the mark!!!

Cheers
Wardy

No, that would be very under hand. They are already on one of the networks, and imho they pay out a fair commission for what they do.

My job is to get them more business, whether from affiliates, or through the search engines. If I can get "double benefits" from combining both, that is a win-win for everybody (apart from their rivals).

imho you shouldnt be looking for affiliate links to increase your PR.

Sensible merchants build their site to close sales and are not too concerned about search engine traffic, letting affiliates bring in traffic, pre-qualifying and selling to it.

Setting up an affiliate program to build page rank and compete with your affiliates will not bring you quality links, as the quality affiliates are too clever for this.

That said I would recommend a read at www.webmasterworld.com and that will give you an idea of how affiliate links and PR can work.

Well first thing I would say here is, affiliate links will not have a negative effect.

I am not going to tell you what networks send across PR (any that do won’t last forever as Google will soon update it’s way of counting them backward links) as to be honest like Wardy I am thinking if this is a reason to get an affiliate program then stop, don't go any further as you will be wasting everyone’s time.

One thing you will get from being on lots of affiliate sites, is that fresh bot will still visit your site after finding it via an affiliate link.

Kandevil,

I have every respect for my affiliates and the traffic they bring me but surely you cannot be saying that a merchant must give up any effort to get their store up the search engine rankings simply because they might compete with your affiliate site?

Affiliate marketing alone will not support a merchant. It would be foolish to rely entirely on what affiliates deliver because one, perhaps unknowing, mistake by the merchant can result in affiliates deserting them in droves.

An online only merchant has to work on all aspects of driving traffic to their sites and this includes search engine traffic.

I agree with what you are saying sillyjokes and I know of the importance of the search engines. I wanted to focus more on the using the affiliates to just gain PR and that shouldnt be the way to do it. There are other ways of boosting your position in the SERPS than leeching PR from affiliates.