How many affiliate links is considered too many?
-
Hi,
Let's say you have great reviews for 50 products and some of these products do have affiliate links on review pages.
And then you have user scores and you come up with a top 20 product list sorted by user scores.
Now if you have the list of top 20 products on one page and all these products have an affiliate link (with nofollow relation and a 301 redirect) on the same page with only a couple of images and a summary of the review linked to the review pages, would this still be considered as what Google calls a "bridge page"?
Would it be better to still generate the top 20 list but rather link to review pages only? (to avoid too many affiliate links on one single page).
-
Thanks for the detailed answer Ryan.
That was very helpful.
best,
-
Exactly!
Let's use three examples involving product reviews of the latest James Bond spy watch.
1 - A product review site which offers 20 affiliate links to various sites visitors can go to and purchase the watch being reviewed. The site owner earns an affiliate fee from all of the sites so he/she does not care which site is used to make the purchase.
2. A product review which offers 1 affiliate link. The site owner likely chose this link because it allows them to earn the highest commission.
3. A product review page which offers the best ?4 links. The site owner shares he searches many sites and provides the best offers for visitors. He compares the affiliate sites and mentions why each link was selected (i.e. fastest shipping, best price, best return policy, etc). He also has an understanding with the seller that if there are any customer service issues then his site will pull the links to the "bad" site. In this case, the site owner is acting as a customer advocate.
If you wanted to buy a product, which page would you find most helpful? A sea of 20 links to random sites offering the products so you can try to figure out the best price and other factors which are important? Or the one link which you assume has a deal with the site owner? Or the last option which seems authentic and the site owner is genuinely helpful?
-
Thanks for the reply Ryan. So it is all about user experience and it doesn't cause any technical issues with ranking mechanism? When you say "rest will work out", do you mean, if the user experience is better, it improves user interaction and page-time (helps with bounce rate too) and this all leads to better ranking?
-
I apologize for the delayed reply.
Extra links on the page does not really detract from the ability of that page to rank. Instead it detracts from the value of all the other links on the page which can impact other pages on your website.
Links are one of the many components which are used to evaluate your overall ranking for a given keyword.
In short, step back and look at the page as a visitor. Try to present the page in the manner which is the most sincerely helpful to users, and the rest will work out. If you present one affiliate link to your best affiliate site, that is helpful. If you present the top 3 with a description of the differences, that is helpful as well. For example:
Site 1 link - cheapest
Site 2 link - free 2 day shipping
Site 3 link - 5 year warranty
If you offer 10 links and they are all the same, that is really not helpful to users.
-
Thanks for the answer.
Now that you mention the disallowing via robots.txt, I have done that after a little bit of research on google's webmaster pages and some other sites.
After considering all the answers and my research, it looks like, the best is to keep the list with fewer links and more content just like the review pages.
-
Have you blocked all the links from being crawled? e.g. /go/affurl - block /go/ in robots.txt ?
-
Thanks for the reply
Yes the reviews are all unique and they receive great feedback from users. I don't worry about the review pages as most of them rank in top 20 and even top 10 in SERPs.
My question was all technical and related to that specific page, which is the top 20 page I am talking about. There is no manipulation involved but it is a LIST that ALSO gives the user an option to directly visit the product page (through affiliate links) or read the rest of the whole review first (which the top 20 list page only displays a small amount of the review).
If so you need to understand each link you add detracts from the overall link value of your page.
So basically, after all you are saying the list page won't be able to rank better with so many links in it? If that's the case, I will remove the product page (affiliate) links from the list and leave only the links that go to the product reviews (internal links).
-
Regarding a bridge page, Google's policies are quite clear and can be located here: http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=190435
In brief, the defining factor is whether or not your web page offers a true value to users. Are your reviews authentic, unique and sincerely helpful? Are they well presented? If so, then it would not be considered a bridge page.
How many affiliate links is considered too many?
Too many for what exactly? Are you trying to rank your website in organic search? If so you need to understand each link you add detracts from the overall link value of your page.
Too many for users? Begin by using your best judgement and perform A/B testing.
In short, if you configure your site to provide the most authentic value for users and you succeed, Google will not have any problem with your site. If you attempt to manipulate your users or Google, then you are risking a penalty.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Affiliate Program: Does anyone know how to set this up?
Hi Guys Does anyone know how I can make a affiliate programme on my website eg - I have a sales person in two of our local regions and I want to find a way I can track any sales made through them via my website so I can pay them their commission. Any advice around this, the website is wordpress! Cheers Justin
Affiliate Marketing | | edward-may0 -
Which is the Best Affiliate Marketing Platform in Australia?
We have 1 eCommerce website (www.bannerbuzz.com.au) for printing products like banners, signs, banner stands, teardrop flags and more... We want to start affiliate marketing for our products with CPA model. So, Do anyone have a good experience with Australian affiliate marketing platform. We are having shareasale account for our USA based website, But Shareasale is not that much aggressive in Australia. So we want to finalize 1 platform for affiliate marketing which can have good strength of advertisers and reputation. Thanks,
Affiliate Marketing | | CommercePundit0 -
Where can I find best resources for Affiliate Marketing?
Any suggestion for Affiliate training, forums, seminars, etc. for newbie? I'm doing my research but would like to hear from pros. I'm experienced web developer and Adsense publisher, now want to step in the world of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing | | webplex0 -
Affiliate site
I have a client I am doing SEO work for. He sells a system that helps people win at video keno. He sells a system for like $200 that shows people step by step how to play and win. Its a good site and he has a ton of verified winnings. My point in saying that, its not a fly-by-night system he wrote in his basement. I know - gambling, not easy for SEO. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. Wouldn't this potentially be perfect for affiliate marketing? He offers a good commission to whoever sends him traffic if they buy. If anybody could direct me to a resource or two that is reputable and would handle as much of the set up and management of this I would be very grateful! Thank you! Matthew
Affiliate Marketing | | Mrupp440 -
What is the best way to boost no. of quality sites linking in?
Analysing my site ranking compared to competitors, I see that our weakness is getting others to share our content and link into it via their own blogs and social media - although I would say our social media activity is pretty good. We have also worked on getting listed free on relevant sites related to our product area (learn spanish in spain) in order to increase sites linking but this is still minute compared to our 2 main competitors. (As a note: paid listings are not totally justifiable for us at this point in time but perhaps in the future we will expand on this). Am I missing something here?
Affiliate Marketing | | sparkit0 -
Affiliate URLs Indexed in Google
We have an active in-house affiliate program which has a create-a-link function where affiliate, as in most affiliate programs, can build links back to our content to produce sales. The problem that I am seeing is that some of the affiliate URL versions are being indexed in Google rather than the original page. For instance.. http://www.ourdomain.com/page_start.aspx?affnum=F025212&Start_Page=RaceCar&referrer=createlink is outranking... http://www.ourdomain.com/racecar This presents 2 issues for us. First, this presents duplicate content issues obviously. Second, we pay our affiliates a portion of the sales so, in order to maximize profitability, we'd like the indexed pages to be the original version. What's the best way to handle this? I want to make sure that affiliates continue to get credit for links from their sites but search engine links should go to the original versions.
Affiliate Marketing | | ATIseo0 -
Recommended affiliate programmes (particularly UK-based)?
I'm starting a photography/travel/music blog and thought it might be a good idea to stick the occasional affiliate link in when it's appropriate. Does anyone have any recommendations? The related items would mainly be to DVDs, books and music, and sometimes something more travel specific like flights. Are the programmes from the likes of Amazon and ebay good, or would it be better to sign up to a system that covers many companies? It'll be my own CMS if that makes any difference. Thanks. 🙂
Affiliate Marketing | | Alex-Harford0 -
Link juice from my affiliates to my site
I'm setting up an affiliate program through 1shoppingcart. Even though I run 3 different websites, the way their program works is that I have to have 1 domain name that my affiliates get as their affiliate link, with their unique id attached at the end. I can give them multiple links that will redirect to various places on my 3 websites, but those original links that they put on their site will all be to just 1 domain. I'm wondering if I still get link juice to my sites even though the links are obviously being redirected? Does it depend on the redirection method? I was just thinking that getting hundreds of affiliates who run related sites could be a very good seo boost if they're all linking to my site, but I feel like it's going to be wasted because of this redirection thing. Hope this made sense. Thanks very much,
Affiliate Marketing | | philraymond
Phil0