Site was on page one until I put Amazon affiliate links on it

[NaturalHealing]

My site was at the bottom of page one for my key words until I put my Amazon affiliate links on it.

I have read on this forum that I should "cloak my links". I have looked at the Pretty Links video, but still have not figured out how to make it work. If you copy and paste the link bit from Amazon, somehow it is not formatted right.

My site dropped to page 14 two days after I put affiliate links on it. If anyone had any doubts about Google and affiliate links, there it is. I had no idea that would happen.

If you cloak the links, will Google be able to figure that out at some point? It seems surreal to me when I have all unique content that the affiliate links squashed my site.

[clarentino]

It may not be because of the affiliate links but the backlinks that point to your site. Google has been acting inconsistent lately. My site was affected also by the constant change in algorithm.

[NaturalHealing]

Thanks. I am checking out that plugin.

So, you are saying that affiliate links that are uncloaked will not sink your site?

I have an exact word match domain and it was on page two with little content a few weeks ago. I was just letting it age and working on other things..

[NaturalHealing]

Thanks. I was pretty devastated when I saw my site drop. I think the Amazon affiliate links are the way to go.

[Sojourn]

Originally Posted by NaturalHealing

So, you are saying that affiliate links that are uncloaked will not sink your site?

I have an exact word match domain and it was on page two with little content a few weeks ago. I was just letting it age and working on other things..

Personally, I NEVER cloak my Amazon links, I don't wait until my sites have aged to put in affiliate links, and I have reviews with 30+ Amazon links that rank #1-2 in Google for competitive keywords. I've never had an issue ranking a site with uncloaked links.

Not that I haven't had sites bounce up and down in Google but the majority of those could be tied to a site being in the first few months of development or right after a backlink campaign when I haven't backlinked regularly for that site.

In your position, I would continue to develop the site. Add more content, tweak existing content to make sure it's valuable, watch your stats, build backlinks, and put your site visitor first. You should bounce back.

[NaturalHealing]

Thanks. Do you do directory submissions yourself, hire a submission company, or just do blogs? I have ranked a few sites to page two with directory submissions alone, but it is very expensive to do through submitedge.com.

[Sojourn]

I don't use site directories, actually. I write very detailed, thorough reviews that help people decide which product in a niche is best suited for them, use strong on-page SEO formatting of my reviews, and build backlinks through a number of channels.

There's a lot of information from experienced Amazon affiliates in this thread that you might find helpful: Amazon Affiliates - Are You Seriously Making Money?

Good luck!

[caseycase]

Without knowing more, I would guess the fact that you did not have much content on it and/or the lack of link building to it, was what led to the drop. I am like Sojourn - I never cloak my Amazon links and have never had an issue, so I bet that is not the issue. However, that is just a guess, as there are so many factors involved.

[NaturalHealing]

I feel a lot better knowing you guys do not cloak. I thought you had to do that.

My site has about 15 articles on the topic. I did add a lot of them in the last two weeks, in addition to the Amazon links. The site just dropped after I added the Amazon links.

I am also adding a few links from some blogs I have had for a while.

[Tom Ryan]

I never cloak my amazon affiliate links. My sites rank just fine without cloaking, and I never wait to put affiliate links on my sites either. You may just be seeing some fluctuations from backlinking your site.

[erskinem]

It was just a strange coincidence. The fact that you have affiliate links (or cloaked links for that matter) won't impact your rankings.

[NaturalHealing]

Thanks guys. I was beginning to think my whole marketing plan was doomed.

[kkrueger]

I just read an interesting article about Google seeing sites that have only affiliate links or links all pointing to a different site as a "Bridge" site.

In fact Andrew Hanson had an interesting blog post about changing affiliate links to no follow so it doesn't appear to Google that you are linking to another site to pass on page rank. You can read it here: 5 Ways To Avoid A Google Beatdown In 2011

Jan Roos also mentions the same thing in his Amazon course. He uses a link cloaking plugin and also makes his links no follow.

It's a royal pain to make links no follow, but from what I am reading it will pay off in the long run.

I have been putting it off thinking it didn't matter. But I have definitely changed my opinion.

HOpe this helps.

[Hamida Harland]

I don't cloak my Amazon links either but I do add my links from the beginning.

I remember a few people used to recommend getting the site ranked and THEN adding the links, but when I did that it triggered a drop in rank for a while (it always comes back though). The first time it happened I thought it was coincidence, but when it happened more than once I attributed it to adding the links.

Don't worry, your site will probably work it's way back up the ranks again.

[NaturalHealing]

I posted on Google webmaster Central. I was told that to use Amazon affiliate links without "no-following" them is the same thing as paid advertising for Amazon. Which is against TOS.

Wordpress has a plugin that will make the links no follow. I have had success using it, but it will not fix image links.

If you do not no-follow your links, you are passing link juice to Amazon, as if they need it..

[AnneE]

Hmm... it does make me wonder, I took affiliate links OFF my site once I got my shopping cart set up entirely and it seems to me, that was somewhat close to a time when my site rose considerably in the rankings.

While I hear people saying it doesn't matter and it's just a coincidence, I'm not completely convinced.

At one point when my site was doing horribly in the rankings I posted on a Google webmaster forum asking for advice and someone commented that my site looked "Spammy." When I finished crying, I asked them WHY they said that and the only reason they gave was that it had some affiliate links.

[Mark Bradley]

One of my Amazon sites lost more than seventy links
yesterday.

I don't cloak the links either and I don't think that
it would affect your site if you did.

I just put it down to more 'Google growing pains'.

[offshoredataentry]

howdy,
Amazon affliate backlinks does not affects your site pagerank. I think low backlinks would be the cause for low ranking.

[vegaskev]

Google and its baby Panda are doing all sorts of interesting things this year. Trying to root out spammy Amazon affiliate stores is definitely one of them. They may just be temporarily pulling it away from the front page until their bots get a chance to do a "content review " and a "content to affiliate ad ratio review". Google is pretty determined to get rid of the content farms that people were using to manipulate page rank (just like they did in early 2000's with link farm burning...lol) as well as get rid of all the bull**** Amazon affiliate stores that Internet Marketers and Telemarketers have been flooding the internet with since 2003.

Its Google's attempt to make the search results more appealing and worthwhile to the people doing searches. In the end, the people doing the searching are the ones clicking the ads, so it makes sense that Google would want to keep them happy, ya know...

If you are running a straight-up Amazon Affiliate Gonna Be A Millionaire In 6 Months store.......you might want to work on another project really soon. On the other hand (which by your post, I think u fall in this category) if you just added Amazon to your site to help monetize it some more, I think you will be fine in a couple of days or so. While you are waiting, I recommend doing a back link check to be sure that nothing has made a drastic fall as well and make sure that you haven't fallen into any nasty link neighborhoods.

Best of luck.

[NaturalHealing]

AnneE, those people at the Google webmaster forum can be mean. I also think they do not know much about SEO, but they think they do.

To update the saga, I did not change the links on my site to no follow. I notice today the site is at the top of page two now. I think just adding a bunch of content made it drop. I don't have that many affiliate links.

I have another site that went down a few positions on page one as an exact word match. I changed the template 2 days ago and added pictures to the posts.

What a drama.

I'm going to do adsense soon. I thought you did not make much money on that until last week I found out you can make several dollars for every click! I'm going to put this on most of my sites. I have a site for a local air conditioning. I've found out they pay $38 to get a click for that. You get half or more of what Google gets paid. I'm excited to find this out.

In the future, I plan to use the Wordpress plugin to no follow the text links. The image links do not seem to work for no follow.

[NaturalHealing]

I also have a theory about adsense. After seeing tons of spammy sites ranking well with adsense on them, I think Google gives them a boost when you put adsense on them. It makes total sense to me. They really want people to pay for advertising. They don't mind if a few spammy sites rise to the top if it pays them.

I now plan to work with Google. You can't beat them, that's for sure.

[cheapstuff]

Maybe the Amazon link drew attention to a flaw on your site. Sometimes robots get set off by weird things... just a thought.

[markleob]

I dont know if it matters but from the very start I really put no-follow tags on my amazon affiliate links. And it just worked for me.

[wolfmmiii]

Originally Posted by erskinem

It was just a strange coincidence. The fact that you have affiliate links (or cloaked links for that matter) won't impact your rankings.

I'm not sure this is "entirely" true. Judicious use of affiliate links should be fine. However, add 30 of them to your page and you could be headed for trouble.

[SümerTech]

I recently got burned by google for using an amazon scraping bot to pull content. Stupid me and forgot to install the wp unique and no follow plugins since it was all within the first week of me setting up the site, but obviously one of the bots picked up on the "thin" doorway pages pretty soon and now I am stuck waiting back for a response from google because they pulled me from the index...really blows because I was making close to $100 a day and then wham nothing. My Question is if I do the same for another site and use the unique and no follow plugins with cloaked links should I be off the googlebot radar?

[linkbuildr]

Did you nofollow your amazon links? If not, do so now.

[RyanLB]

A recent algorithm update punished sites that have "too much" advertising above the fold. Do you think that this could have been part of the problem? are the ads above the fold?

I would say remove them immediately untily ou come up with another way to monetize it.

[MarcusHichens]

How does having nofollow or do follow amazon links affect anything?

[wpo1408]

Originally Posted by AnneE

Hmm... it does make me wonder, I took affiliate links OFF my site once I got my shopping cart set up entirely and it seems to me, that was somewhat close to a time when my site rose considerably in the rankings.

While I hear people saying it doesn't matter and it's just a coincidence, I'm not completely convinced.

At one point when my site was doing horribly in the rankings I posted on a Google webmaster forum asking for advice and someone commented that my site looked "Spammy." When I finished crying, I asked them WHY they said that and the only reason they gave was that it had some affiliate links.

Google's wiki-help forum is crap.
Don't listen to any of the pack that get on there unles they prove that they have a job at google.

And even they might not know.