Redirect to Affiliate script via htacces - Is that risky?
-
Hi,
We are offering an affiliate programme to publishers. The problem is that the links to the Affiliate Script are very user-UNfriendly (something like http://scripts.affiliateprogramme....../..../....)
I would like to give them a simple url:
www.website.com/PublishersPage
And then redirect this via HTACCESS to the script link (which would then send them back to us).
Would that be a problem for SEO? for Google?
Thank you for your help.
-
If I understand this correctly, you are the merchant, and you have some affiliate software. Your affiliates will come to your software and get these links to use, which are not clean? You then want the affiliates to have a clean URL to use to link to you?
That's actually done very commonly by many experienced affiliates already. In terms of SEO, most affiliates that I know set their affiliate links to go through a sub directory link like /go or /jump. That directory typically gets blocked in the robots.txt file, so that those links will be completely ignored by spiders - so as a merchant, you'll still get the clicks, but won't get any SEO benefit from doing that.
It really is better if you can just use an affiliate program that gives your affiliates clean links in the first place. The cleaner your links are, the less likely that affiliates will think to cloak the links on their own websites, and use some techniques that reduce any SEO value of those links for you. For your affiliates, the simpler / easier you make it for them - the better results you're going to see from your program.
-
I don't see this being a problem directly. You will have some advantage in the way of citations and links to
www.website.com/PublishersPage from the affiliate websites, but then these links will then redirect to the script via .htaccess and then back to your website.
How many affiliates are we talking ? If you think from the affiliate perspective, they'd like it as well I am guessing because if I am the affiliate, I would love to link to www.website.com/PublishersPage vs http://scripts.affiliateprogramme....../..../....)
Do yes, definitely consider doing it. Your affiliates are going to love it. I don't see a lot of merchants doing this. This is definitely something unique.
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
-
How do you find Affiliate Links on your site that have not been nofollowed?
We've just signed up to an affiliate scheme because we were sending links to them because we thought their product was valuable to our users. So we now have to go through and nofollow all of these links over 100's of pages. Is there any way that do a crawl of the site to identify all links to a particular site and tell me what page they are on and whether they are nofollow/follow?
Affiliate Marketing | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
How to prevent affiliates from bringing negative SEO?
Hi there, I'm just about to integrate iDevAffiliate network for one of my sites, however it occurred to me that affiliates may (unfortunately) resort to black hat methods without me becoming aware of it, which could pass negative link juice to my site. Is there any way to use affiliate networks such as iDev without causing this problem? I was thinking of simply using a different URL, but the problem is that 301 redirects won't mitigate the issue. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | freeunlocks0 -
Will giving a blogger an affiliate url to my site reduce her links' seo value to me?
If a blogger were to write a post about one of my products and link to my product page, would giving her an affiliate url to link to rather than the normal link spoil the seo value of the link? So instead of mysite.com/product-one it would be mysite.com/affiliate/blogger/product-one Google would think... this is a transaction not a vote of confidence?
Affiliate Marketing | | Brocberry0 -
Affiliate program in the education niche
Just curious if anyone knew of some good ones out there. Looking to try a couple out. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | astahl110 -
In search of the perfect SEO affiliate ID'd URL
Hi, I'm building an affiliate system for our website, and I obviously want to gain as much SEO benifit from it as possible. So I am wondering what the optimal solution is with regard to how an affilaite URL is tagged. After looking into it a bit more - I have come up with the following. 1/. Use an affilaite URL idendifier with a #
Affiliate Marketing | | James77
EG like www.mysite.com#123 2/. 301 redirect the affilaite URL to the "real URL"
EG www.mysite.com#123 301 -> www.mysite.com What do you think of this? Thanks0 -
In search of the perfect SEO affiliate ID'd URL
Hi, I'm building our own affilaite system. I want to make sure I get as much SEO benifit from affiliate links as possible so I am in search of the perfect solution. My thoughts after doing a bit of research are to do the following - using the # as my identifier: 1/. Use an ID like www.mysite.com/#A123 2/. Redirect via 301 these urls to www.mysite.com Any thoughts on this, or other things I should be thinking of with regard so building an affilaite system that has strong SEO benifits? Thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | James770 -
Affiliate for SEO
Hello, If you get bad websites as affiliates through share a sale can that hurt your seo? Thanks Tyler
Affiliate Marketing | | tylerfraser0 -
Outbound Affiliate Links - Positive or Negative Effect
Hello I would like to increase the value of my value proposition to users by adding complimentor affiliate links and embedded widgets like postcode search to my promote my affiliate's service. I already have a great ranking.... Am I jeopardizing my position by putting outbound links to affiliate sites? Also would a nofollow tag on an affiliate link work? I understand Google is fast changing - so what is the latest advice on this for Spring 2011? Thanks a lot
Affiliate Marketing | | philipjterry0