SEO Implications For a Technical Functionality Fix
-
Our Magento based affiliate extension is not working, due to a conflict with the Varnish caching system. Varnish has a known bug which does not allow multiple cookies to be set.
Our workaround involves redirecting any request with the affiliate tracking parameter to the HTTPS version of the site. Varnish does not run on HTTPs and therefore our affiliate cookie will be set. Note: the main content of our site runs on HTTP.
My SEO concern is how to handle this for the search engines. We have a few things to consider:
- Redirect: Should we use a 301 or 302?
- Canonical: It seems to make sense to include a canonical on the HTTP version of the site without the affiliate tracking parameter - right?
- Robots Meta Tags: "noindex, follow" or "index, follow"
- Am I missing something?
Thanks for your time and consideration!
-
Thanks again to Ryan and Cyrus for chiming in. I'm going with:
- noindex,nofollow all HTTPs pages (they're not in the index anyway)
- Pull canonical tags from all HTTPs pages
- 301 redirect affiliate id links to HTTPs version of the page
Now, I just need to remember all of this when we finally get to transferring the site fully to HTTPs.
-
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
-
Excellent and thorough breakdown by Cyrus here Darren. I didn't consider the nofollow / noindex combination negating the need for canonical because I was thinking of the incoming affiliate links to be nofollow to begin with (links form outside your site). I was also thinking nofollow / follow conflicts might arise on your HTTP site due to their presence on the HTTPS pages depending on how your site is constructed (inside your site). But now you've got analysis on the many angles you should be set to make an informed decision either way. Cheers!
-
If I understand correctly, you have incoming affiliate links which don't work on HTTPs due to varnish, so you are redirecting them to HTTPs, where they do work. Let me know if I'm missing anything.
Okay, first of all if you are serving up two versions of your site on any page (HTTP and HTTPS) without 301'ing one to the other, you should absolutely have canonical tags pointing to the HTTP. And without the affiliate tracking parameter. (Edit: see thoughts below on NOINDEX)
As for 301 vs 302: Technically, to stay within Google's guidelines, affiliate links to your site should be nofollowed. In practice, sometimes they can offer a ranking benefit, but more than often Google discounts them. Regardless, if you abuse them for linking purposes it can come back to bite you in some instances. There's no clear answer, but keep in mind 302s may very well negate some of the link equity from these affiliate links (which may or may not be a good thing)
NOINDEX - My thought process is, if you don't want the HTTPS URLs indexed, and the link equity from the affiliate links isn't a consideration, then it's likely best to NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW the pages. This ensures they will be kept out of Google's index, keep crawl efficiency optimized, and deliver cleaner results. This also means the canonical tag isn't necessary. (and probably unwanted, as it sends conflicting signals with the NOINDEX tag) Keep in mind this strategy effectively kills any incoming link equity from the affiliate links, but does help keep you within Google's good graces.
-
I don't see a downside to the 302 as it seems like the best one to use in this case. Similarly Google recommends a 302 for pages that are alternate language copies of each other, so it's a well-established convention to redirect in that regard, "A third scenario would be to automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content." from http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/creating-right-homepage-for-your.html. In your case the location and language portion is being replaced with affiliate tracking variable.
-
Thanks for the time.
RE: HTTPs the entire site. Varnish doesn't play too nice with HTTPs. Plus, my understand is that one's site may take a performance hit...The whole reason we went to Varnish was due to perforance. BTW...the site is now pretty fast.
RE: 302. Just wondering if there are any down side...
-
Hi Darren. If you can, you could also consider migrating the entire site to HTTPS and using the 301 redirect. Otherwise a 302 would be more applicable as it's a conditional redirect for the page, based on the affiliate tracking parameter. With the 302 and HTTPS configuration, you'd also want to additionally set canonical to the HTTP version as that's the more publicly available site, and one you'd expect crawlers to go to minus the affiliate link. In this case it also sounds like the page is going to almost an exact duplicate, so noindex would be wise as well since you don't want search traffic landing on HTTPS as they're not an affiliate visit. That covers most of it. It sounds like you've already read what's out there, but here's Google's guide on using HTTPS: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543. Cheers!
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
-
Any Ideas for SEO opportunities at an electronics convention (CES)?
Hello All, I'm currently helping someone that sells a unique 35mm slide scanner with his digital presence. For a quick explanation, it scans much faster than it's competition and targets photography/scanning businesses. The owner will have part of a booth at CES (large electronics convention) to display the product, and will also have time to network with others within this industry and many others. At last years convention, there was a good in-person response and a few articles written about the product, but that is about it. I would like to send him to the show with a more digital mindset, so I am wondering if anyone has any ideas for link-bait, promotions, or really anything that will help the website rank higher/get more traffic. We have tons of content ideas and other ideas that are "online" to drive traffic, but when it comes to a in-person event I am drawing a big old blank (but I feel there must be some opportunities that I am missing). If you have any ideas and would like to share, it would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks! Eric
Affiliate Marketing | | EHuhn30 -
Does having affiliates hurt seo?
one of my clients has a TON of affiliates out there building links back to his site all with the ?ref=AFFILIATENAME tracking string does google understand this and not count these links or is there a way to nofollow all links with this tracking string? just wondering how big companies rank well and still have thousands of affiliates building links on all kinds of properties using all kinds of methods thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | Ezpro90 -
Can linking out to a weak site harm my sites SEO?
We have an affiliate that wants us to link to his site to help him get started. His website looks okay and is in the same niche as us. However, he has PR 0 and no Page Trust. We could work in a natural looking link in a news article, but there is no way he could be considered any kind of "authority" link. Can linking to his site harm us?
Affiliate Marketing | | theLotter0 -
What is an 'Anchor Text' and does it have any SEO Benefit?
Hi - we have been building as SEO strategy but need clarification on what benefit 'anchor text' has for SEO rankings? For example - we have been creating links from external sites to ours, but the anchor text is not our main search term. I.E - the Anchor Text reads 'web design', but the ALT TAG reads 'web design birmingham'. Question is - if we wish to achieve maximum SEO rankings for the term 'web design birmingham', where should it appear....in the ALT TAG or the Annchor text'? Many thanks! Phil
Affiliate Marketing | | Globalgraphics0 -
SEO and Affiliate Links
Hello, We run a travel related website and we started to run our own affilate newtwork to promote the sales of our products. At the moment the affilate links pont to a spacific affilate url in order to tack conversions : abcweb.com/affiliate/nameqaz I'm wondering how is the best way to run a private affilate programm considering SEO: Is there a way yo benefit from those links ? What are the best strategies to do this? If yes, Is there any benefit from redirecting 301 those links to the original page (the one accesible to google and the one we want to rank for) or is it better to use a king of canonical method. Thanks a lot for sharing you experiences , giving your opinion and indicate resources. Best Regards Daria
Affiliate Marketing | | stereo690 -
How much SEO benefit am I getting from 'affiliate' links?
Hi all, We run lots of different campaigns with affiliates and as such they have links on their websites pointing back to ours. I was keen to know how much 'link-juice' these kinds of links are passing back to our websites or how much SEO benefit we are getting from them. The links have "?=affiliate" in them. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!! Many thanks! Rob
Affiliate Marketing | | RobertHill0 -
Can a disapproved adwords ad affect SEO ranking?
Hi No not used adwords before as our onsite SEO was going well - with long tail terms ranking well to product detail pages. On Sunday we tried to set up an adwords ad as it wasgoing to be used for the forthcoming launch of a new product. - - PS Vita I think it is being classified as a bridge page although other price comparison sites such as kelkoo and pricerunner gocompare, travelsupermarket etc all seem to get through and have ads on Google? More interesting though is since the ad was disapproved my organic search results have disappeared? (which have all been white hat) Coincidence perhaps or something more sinister from Google?? One for you Randfish perhaps?
Affiliate Marketing | | ocelot0 -
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