Affililiate Links and the rel=nofollow tag

[Paul Wright]

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Hey,

I’ve just built a new site and just running through the final stages of clean up and error checking etc. One thing that has come to mind is the old rel=”nofollow” tag and I wondered what everyones current thoughts/findings may be when using this tag in an affiliate marketing context.

Currently all affiliate links on my site are in the format:

http://www.mysite.com/offer/go.php?id=1234

From what I’ve read all search engines now recognise this tag and it should be used when you do not want search engines to factor in the out going link as part of the link building process (so far so good). It strikes me that it would also be good with redirects as above to cover any aff links that SE’s might not like (or lower your rankngs for).

Perhaps some of you SEO bods could shed some light on this?

Thoughts?

Cheers
Paul.

[Wardy]

Hi Paul, this is th ereply I got when I posted a similar question a while ago http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=41048

I went for what fraser suggested, I used the nofollow attribute and also as the links run through a script blocked access to it via the robots.txt

This way hopefully if any engines ignore one of the commands they will pick up the other.

Cheers
Wardy

[Paul Wright]

Cheers Wardy, I completely forgot about blocking stuff with the robots file. That's looks like a very good way to keep a tight ship.

Have you seen any of the issues that Elaine described in your other post? i.e lots of rel=nofollow tags leading to lower ranking?

I have a "quick offers" section that will feature on every page all using the rel=nofollow tag which will automatically add an additional 6 links on each page.

Cheers
Paul.

[Elaine]

Have no concrete proof that the rel-no follow thing caused my pages to fall - and they weren't attached to an affiliate link - but that is the only time I've had problems with these couple of pages - which always survived the old (hopefully) Google dance.

[Paul Wright]

Thanks Elaine. I guess a little testing of my own is needed.

[Shane]

we have nofollow'd every aff and external link on a site we have and it ranks well for some half decent terms, all internal links are follow but every afflink and external link is no follow

and on this site we don't link out to any other sites in a links swap stylie, we have inbounds but no outbound links without the nofollow attribute

seems to work fine seo wise, although I'm no guru on that area

[BigB]

no outbound links without the nofollow attribute

A lot of people are saying that having some relevant outbound links is becoming more and more useful in improving rankings.

I would also second the robots.txt method of blocking outbound affiliate links - no firm evidence - just paranoia

[freetraff]

Nofollow has many surprises to come with. The whole scheme becomes a perfect subject for manipulation, both good or bad. I think Google staff will soon be trying their best to explain that they introduced this because they had only the best intentions in the world.

Technically it is very easy to add or remove this parameter from the links. And this way the whole nofollow problem can really fork for the people with normal and tricky intentions. And simple users as always will suffer from it, not knowing where to drive their energy to.

[hpops]

A lot of people are saying that having some relevant outbound links is becoming more and more useful in improving rankings.

I would also second the robots.txt method of blocking outbound affiliate links - no firm evidence - just paranoia

The problem with this is that affiliate links have no relevancy because they go to the networks domain and not the clients.

[BigB]

Yes, exactly - and I block them with robots.txt

But I include a small number of other relevant links - not on every page.