Link to merchant or re-direct?

[kingoftherodeo]

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Hey All

Was wondering whether it would be best to use PHP redirects to send the user to a merchant?

At the moment my links are straight to the merchant but by using re-directs will i become more SEO friendly, i.e. have a page that hasnt got lots of outgoing affiliate links?

Thanks

[TheGeneral]

hmm yeah thats a question I have pondered over as well, interesting to see what the answer is.

[kingoftherodeo]

Yeah i read that google doesnt looks fondly on affiliate sites and this would stop that as you can just tell the robot to not index the php redirect pages in the txt file?

[tbp]

I always use redirects, rather than straight affiliate links.

It's not specifically because of SEO, more for my own use as it gives me much more data that I get normally. When someone clicks on my redirect, it logs the click in my database before redirecting to the affiliate link. That way I can tell which products are sending over the most traffic to the merchants site, even if a sale isn't made (which means nothing would be logged at the networks site).

With over 90% of my sites at number 1 in Google now, I can't say it doesn't hurt SEO

I can't specifically comment though as i`ve done it from day 1, so haven't seen what happens on sites which don't have this.

In my opinion its worth doing anyway, because of the extra info it gives, allowing you to rearrange your pages to put your top sellers at the top.

[cDc1979]

I use a redirect in the same fashion, single redirect script - logs the hit in my database -and the script itself is a disallow in my robots file. Havent had any problems doing this. The only place i dont do this is with my banners, as I mostly use the javascript types and to save myself time I just copy the html code block from the affiliate program links and dont bother editing the URL to use the redirect script.

[kingoftherodeo]

Hi Guys

Sorry i've been a bit slack checking back on this. Thanks for all your advice though, im going to start implementing this today

Cheers again!

[kingoftherodeo]

Out of interest what about if you have a jump menu? Should you use php re-direct then also or can i link direct to merchant there?

[kingoftherodeo]

Having an awful day today for sales! Is there something i might have done wrong implementing the php script?

I just used the header redirect php code:

<?php
header('Location: http://www.example.com/');
?>

[dougs]

Redirect everytime....you can hide lots of sruff and also get more data about your click out people

Doug
Tradedoubler leave London office and take our cookies | Doug's mouthpiece

[kingoftherodeo]

Perfect thanks Dougs!

[Scorpioncart]

Yeah i read that google doesnt looks fondly on affiliate sites and this would stop that as you can just tell the robot to not index the php redirect pages in the txt file?

If google doesn't like affiliate links on a page why is this page Go Compare - Compare Car & Home Insurance with Go Compare UK
ranked Number 1 from 22,900,000* results on google ?

*google results correct at time of posting

[kingoftherodeo]

As you can tell from my post im no expert! Thats why im asking peoples advice.

[matthew03]

I can only go on my limited experience.

I have numerous links going out from my site to merchants on affiliate window and they are all direct links.

I am sitting at number 1,1 and 3 for my three main key phrases and have over a dozen on the front page of Google along with Yahoo and others.

It does'nt seem to be harming me but I could just be being lucky

[dougs]

Yes but nortons or mcaffe can be blocking yoiur links

[kingoftherodeo]

Yeah i forget about software like that! Darn norton/mcaffe!