Affiliate Site with Unique Content - How to play it safe?
-
Hi There,
I'm a consultant and am used to working for brands that have their own product. Currently I am advising a hotel site that is an affiliate of another branded site. They do rather well at what they do but I am looking for some advise.
I am aware that google tends not to "like" affiliates, I assume this is because the product is not theirs or that they have thin content.
With this affiliate they have not used any XML information, they have built all their own pages, taken non of the content from the master site, but eventually, in the buying process the customer has to go off to a white label version of the master company site.
Even though all the landing pages have unique content and are currently doing well in the SERPS im concerned that with a Google update sometime in the future, perhaps there will be a penalty. We've done all we can content wise (videos, unique photos, unique words, social etc).
q1 - is there any way to link the two sites, the white label and the main content site so google doesn't see it as leaving one site for another?
q2 - how is this situation best handled?
-
Hi kane
Thanks a lot for your response
In the long run, it may not be the only way to make money, but in order to contract the product, I gotta get the hits running through the site... bit of a viscious circle. I was a bit worried the rank will fall but I think you're right, with an affiliate site theres only so much you can do, as long as you follow best practice.
Ive been worried about it also for bounce rate stats but having watched rands whiteboard friday, seems its not something I need to worry about YET...
Thanks Kane
-
Sounds like they're doing about as well as any affiliate business model can do in regards to creating valuable content and value for site visitors.
I wouldn't worry about linking to the other site - if that's the only way to make money than there's not much choice in the matter.
Google isn't going to "see it as leaving one site for another" - if anything it's a good thing that site visitors went to that site, and found a link that led to whatever they were looking for. Google can't draw any conclusions beyond that.
If you're worried about passing link value, find a way to 302 redirect the link.
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
-
Moving content from 1 site to another
Hi Moz'ers I have recently taken over the company I work for (www.prendas.co.uk) and want to migrate approx 200 pages from my hobby site to my company's eCommernce website on Shopify Plus. The content (text/photos) are highly relevant to the company, is unique & written by me and will hopefully generate some sales. I have a plan to gradually move them all over (I intend on doing 2-5/day) into a specific blog section to house them all. I'll then create an Apache perm. redirect to the old site too. Source: cycling-jersey-collection.com D/A 21
Technical SEO | | andystorey
Destination: prendas.co.uk D/A 35 The plan is to eventually shut the old site down. Does anybody have any best practice/and/or recommendations? Thanks in advance. Andy0 -
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
Would posting content into these sites be a good boost related to authority?
Hi, Would posting content into these sites be a good boost related to authority? Press releases PRWebPRLeapArticlesthetechscoop.netthecampussocialite.comtechi.combusiness2community.commediaite.comexaminer.commakezine.comhuffingtonpost.comAll these site charge to post is it worth?Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons1 -
Duplicate Content Question (E-Commerce Site)
Hi All, I have a page that ranks well for the keyword “refurbished Xbox 360”. The ranking page is an eCommerce product details page for a particular XBOX 360 system that we do not currently have in stock (currently, we do not remove a product details page from the website, even if it sells out – as we bring similar items into inventory, e.g. more XBOX 360s, new additional pages are created for them). Long story short, given this way of doing things, we have now accumulated 79 “refurbished XBOX 360” product details pages across the website that currently, or at some point in time, reflected some version of a refurbished XBOX 360 in our inventory. From an SEO standpoint, it’s clear that we have a serious duplicate content problem with all of these nearly identical XBOX 360 product pages. Management is beginning to question why our latest, in-stock, XBOX 360 product pages aren't ranking and why this stale, out-of-stock, XBOX 360 product page still is. We are in obvious need of a better process for retiring old, irrelevant (product) content and eliminating duplicate content, but the question remains, how exactly is Google choosing to rank this one versus the others since they are primarily duplicate pages? Has Google simply determined this one to be the original? What would be the best practice approach to solving a problem like this from an SEO standpoint – 301 redirect all out of stock pages to in stock pages, remove the irrelevant page? Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Justin
Technical SEO | | JustinGeeks0 -
404 and Duplicate Content.
I just submitted my first campaign. And it's coming up with a LOT of errors. Many of them I feel are out of my control as we use a CMS for RV dealerships. But I have a couple of questions. I got a 404 error and SEO Moz tells me the link, but won't tell me where that link originated from, so I don't know where to go to fix it. I also got a lot of duplicate content, and it seems a lot of them are coming from "tags" on my blog. Is that something I should be concerned about? I will have a lot more question probably as I'm new to using this tool Thanks for the responses! -Brandon here is my site: floridaoutdoorsrv.com I welcome any advice or input!
Technical SEO | | floridaoutdoorsrv0 -
Will rankings for my micro site rank better if I 301 redirect it to my main site?
This is my first time asking so I will try to be as clear as possible. Ok, I have a micro site that is an (exact match domain) and the domain is a couple 3-4 years old and ranks very well for several search terms. The main two terms it ranks for are like this. houses for rent in XXXXX XXXXX homes for rent (XXXXX equals a city name) The issue is this site has no backlinks, zero advanced SEO, I only did basic optimization to it when i set the site up. Even site structure, url structure all are not good.
Technical SEO | | Robbie8299
The only page I have ever even seen rank is the main root url. But with all that the site does really good in the top 1-2 results for key search terms. Now, I have a main site that is a very big site that has steadily been climbing in search terms every month with great backlinks, optimized for the city and all.
It currently ranks on second page for the listed search terms listed above. What I want to do is 301 redirect this microsite to my city page on my main site that is much better optimized for the key city terms.
The 301 redirect would point this "root domain" (mymicrosite.com) to my city page that looks like this. www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX If I do this will Google rank my main URL city page as well as it ranks this microsite with zero links, seo, etc, etc. What happens if it does not? Will I be able to turn off the 301 redirect and keep the microsite rankings? My main reason for wanting this is I want this city page to rank well and I only want to optimize one site instead of both. Any help would be great!0 -
Will 301 redirecting a site multiple times still preserve the original site value?
Hi, All! If site www.abc.com was already 301 redirected to site www.def.com, and now the site owner wants to redirect www.def.com to www.ghi.com - is there any concern that it's not going to work, and some of the original linkjuice, rank, trust, etc. is going to vanish? Or as long as the 301s are set up right, should you be able to 301 indefinitely? Does anyone have any experience with actually doing this and seeing good/bad/neutral results? Thanks in advance! -Aviva B
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0 -
Internal Linking: Site-wide VS Content Links
I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit. I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links. My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0