PHP Redirection better than Nofollow?
-
Hello, if I have affiliate outbound links in my blogs, what's better in terms of SEO, to use PHP Redirection or Nofollow for those links?
For example, instead of using nofollow for the outbound affiliate links, I can use some plugin for WordPress that does this:
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename1 -> redirects to the affiliate link1.
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename2 -> redirects to the affiliate link2.
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename3 -> redirects to the affiliate link3.
Is this better?
Thanks.
-
Excellent points and advice, thanks everyone for answering.
-
Federico - Sure... if it does that as part of the plugin, then it should be good to go...
-
Hey Jeff, probably if there's a plugin designed to specifically redirect affiliate links I bet it already does a 302 redirect while suggesting to add the disallow in the robots.txt (or even adding itself).
-
My hunch is that if you use the method you just outlined, where:
mydomain.com/affiliatesitename1 -> redirects to the affiliate link1... you are essentially creating the equivalent of a followed, 301 redirect from your site to their site, and passing along link value as a result. It would appear to me that this would be a followed link. Depending on the number of redirects, a percentage of the link value may be lost as a result. But if that is what you would like to do, then go ahead and do so.
But a better practice would be to no-follow those links, as they are outbound affiliate links.
Hope this makes sense?
Thanks,
Jeff -
Both will actually have the same effect as long as you nofollow your affiliate links directly or the PHP script that does the redirection is disallowed via the robots.txt + makes a 302 redirect.
The downside of using nofollow is that you can't track the hits on those links from your end, but with PHP you can save that into a DB or any file.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Redirecting dofollow, high-domain-authority links from one site to another: good idea?
I have two sites that offer help for freelance writers. The first gets almost no search traffic and is very low priority for me. The second is my main priority and gets substantial search traffic. The low-priority site has a significant number of dofollow backlinks from high-domain-authority sites. Is it a good idea to 301 redirect these links to similar/related posts on my high-priority site? Would this potentially boost the SEO of my high-priority site? Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | John88990 -
Spammy links redirecting to homepage of site -
Hey guys, I'm auditing a website at the moment and Moz is showing a few spammy links linking to it. The problem is these domains are all 301 redirecting to the domain I'm auditing. Let's say I'm auditing Site A. Site B is been flagged in Moz OSE with 12 spam flags. When I try to open Site B in a browser, it redirects back to Site A. What's the best thing to do, here? Disavowing domains redirecting to the site is surely a bad idea? Cheers.
Link Building | | BrianYork-AIM0 -
What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?
I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site. I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?
Link Building | | Total-Design-Shop0 -
Disavow & nofollow from same IP
I'm a web developer, and as such, we run a bank of half a dozen dedicated servers. I have 2 questions with regards to nofollow links There's half a dozen sites linking back to us from the same bank of servers (across 3 different IP's but all in the same facility) because we have donated our web design services and we're a sponsor. It's not a paid link, it's a sponsorship. Should I still nofollow the link? I run a couple of personal blogs on the same bank of servers. There's an absolute tonne of original content and a handful of links back to my shop. Because I own both sites, should I nofollow these links as well? I am doing a massive cleanup before the Penguin pops his head out again.
Link Building | | sparrowdog0 -
Follow or Nofollow?
Hi all, I have a question, which I can not figure out the answer to. I have a web site which collects sporting news articles so that users need only to go to one site to check news about a subject instead of going to all sorts of sites. On the site I simply link out (to over 300 sources). My question is: The links (I have thousands and thousands per day) should they be follow or nofollow? Do I gain anything by having them set to follow. Or do I lose anything by setting them to nofollow? The site is http://www.holdnyt.dk - if you want to see how many links are per page and so on. -Rasmus
Link Building | | rasmusbang0 -
Why is Business.com a valuable link when they are all nofollow?
Earlier today, I received a $50 off coupon for a Business.com listing. Back when I was really learning about directories, lots of people recommended getting one of these listings because editors actually review it to make sure the website linked is of good quality. Even the SEOmoz Directory Guide regards it as a good link. Now, it seems like every outbound link from Business.com has a 'nofollow' tag right when they link to the target website. Furthermore, the actual business listing doesn't even link to the website! Let me take, for example, web design companies: http://www.business.com/internet/web-design/ This directory has tons of 'nofollow' links. On top of that, if you take any of the companies listed and do a search for their business page, the business page doesn't even have a link to their website! That doesn't exactly seem like it's worth $300 a year... Any chance there is something I'm missing here? I'm not fully understanding this, it seems.
Link Building | | CHEATERS0 -
Does this redirect pass any juice?
Does this link pass link juice: http://www.finda.co.nz/redirect.php?listing_id=r2vp&url=http://www.avantifinance.co.nz
Link Building | | conradh1 -
Redirect
A few pages get a lot of external links and rank well (when site:domain.com) but i do not want that those pages rank well (these are blog pages and we are in E-commerce) Can i redirect these pages to other pages which are more important to me and customers because google see only the link or is google so smart that they see a realtion between the page from which i get the links and to the page in my webste In that case i rename the old pages.
Link Building | | turnon0