Soft 404s

[MikeCronnie]

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I Was recommended a while back, that search engines did not like to see affiliate links leaving your site and that it could have a detrimental effect on page ranking. However, now i am starting to wonder.

I was advised to mask these outbound links and make them look like internal links using a php redirect, however Google is now picking these links up as soft 404s. Which do you think will be having the most detrimental effect now and do you think it is worth unmasking my links - and just showing the full affiliate link? and if to continue masking, how best to prevent them showing as a soft 404?

Cheers

[allthediscounts]

Many sites redirect the links for valid reasons. Take for instance voucher codes sites. Before leaving the site they might update some stats, refresh the current page, then open a new window. It's not possible to achieve this using a plain <a> tag so its probably wrong to penalise a site for proper use.

[dc000000]

However, now i am starting to wonder.

Well done - you have learned an important lesson in that most advice you are given is rubbish and will do more harm than good. There are ways to redirect an affiliate link and valid reasons for doing so but outsmarting google isn't one of them.
If you don't know how to do it then it's easier and safer just to use the affiliate link as it is - you won't be penalised for it.

[MikeCronnie]

Ok, thanks guys, i will go back to doing it the old fashioned way for the most part.