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Help (Not a noob thread)

by BenSalez
18 replies
  • SEO
    • |
To my shock and dismay my organic listing in google for my staple clickbank product is listing as a hoplink for an affiliate!!!!!

How can I correct this, this a huge mistake! I need the listing to register for my domain without a hoplink. Are any other CB vendors having this issue?

Thanks,

Ben
#helpppppppppppp #noob #thread
  • Profile picture of the author BenSalez
    I just changed the url parameters preferance in google webmaster tools to ignore the url parameter "hop."

    Is this the correct action and will this fix the issue?
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  • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
    I don't know how to fix your issue but back in the old days we made a lot of money by getting our affiliate links to rank well on Google. After a year or two they cracked down on that and the free ride was over. If you have an affiliate who has managed to get his link to rank well, hey, that is the reason you have affiliates, so they can do the work. You should thank the guy.
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    • Profile picture of the author BenSalez
      Originally Posted by Rich Struck View Post

      I don't know how to fix your issue but back in the old days we made a lot of money by getting our affiliate links to rank well on Google. After a year or two they cracked down on that and the free ride was over. If you have an affiliate who has managed to get his link to rank well, hey, that is the reason you have affiliates, so they can do the work. You should thank the guy.
      I already had the #1 organic listing in google for my keyword. Now instead of my normal URL, it is showing his aff link.

      Any ideas?

      Ben
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  • Profile picture of the author trevord92
    Ben: as Rich said, that's what affiliates are for.

    There's no entitlement to first position in Google, you have to do work to achieve it.

    Which means the affiliate has done more work than you (at least in Google's eyes) and is reaping the reward.

    If you have other products that you'd like to sell but aren't getting top position for you, consider encouraging the affiliate to promote those as well.

    Trevor
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    • Profile picture of the author BenSalez
      Trevor I am not sure you understand the issue, but thats ridiculous. Maybe I did not explain the situation correctly.

      My website has held the #1 spot in my niche long before I even registered my product on clickbank.

      Now for some reason, instead of showing just my website it is listing with the hop link.

      Originally Posted by trevord92 View Post

      Ben: as Rich said, that's what affiliates are for.

      There's no entitlement to first position in Google, you have to do work to achieve it.

      Which means the affiliate has done more work than you (at least in Google's eyes) and is reaping the reward.

      If you have other products that you'd like to sell but aren't getting top position for you, consider encouraging the affiliate to promote those as well.

      Trevor
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  • Profile picture of the author Niche Kid
    Do you mean your listing url shows like this in Google:



    And if so, does it really matter?

    cheers,
    Simon
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    • Profile picture of the author BenSalez
      No, its not showing as hop 0.... its showing an affiliate extension.

      I have worked hard to SEO my site for over a year, and now an affiliate will get credit for every single organic sale.

      Any thoughts?


      Originally Posted by sbachell View Post

      Do you mean your listing url shows like this in Google:



      And if so, does it really matter?

      cheers,
      Simon
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      • Profile picture of the author drmani
        Originally Posted by BenSalez View Post

        No, its not showing as hop 0.... its showing an affiliate extension.

        I have worked hard to SEO my site for over a year, and now an affiliate will get credit for every single organic sale.

        Any thoughts?
        Tell me who your top-ranking affiliate is.

        I'd love for him to get MY sites ranked high on Google - so that
        both s/he and I can make more sales!

        Seriously, Ben, you shouldn't be concerned as long as your
        affiliate program was launched after you computed your
        acceptable profit AFTER paying out an affiliate commission.

        And you get to make many more sales on the back end to
        your new customers, right?

        All success
        Dr.Mani
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  • Profile picture of the author Peter May
    It is a coincidence reading this thread because over the last 2-3 days I have come across quite a few hop links on the first page which I never noticed before.

    If you are using wordpress you could cloak your link with pretty link and actually use a keyword in the cloaked link, not sure if this will help but should only take a short time to try then wait for Google to crawl again.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaryMckenzie
    Yes, it is positive thing for you that your product is being sold by your affiliates.....

    However, I also tried a lot to rank affiliate links but I failed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Hlatky
    I apologize that most of the people here do not understand your question :p

    Sadly, I cannot help with your issue, sorry.
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  • Profile picture of the author trevord92
    Ben

    Sorry if I don't understand you.

    It's difficult trying to visualise without a picture - although I can understand you not wanting to give away your niche.

    Google places sites in the search engine results according to its own algorithm. These results change with algorithm changes, new sites appearing, old sites going, new promotions happening, etc.

    Google doesn't particularly care whether the number 1 slot (or any other for that matter) is occupied by you or someone else.

    Search results are not cast in tablets of stone - they change over time.

    If someone else promotes harder/better than you then it's highly likely they'll overtake you in time.

    On the plus side, it's your product not a competitors...

    Trevor
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  • Profile picture of the author Niche Kid
    What I didn't understand initially (and I think the OP doesn't realise) is that MyDomain.com/?hop=12345 is seen as a competing page to MyDomain.com

    So what I understand now from the other posters is that because an affiliate has also done a bunch of SEO to rank his link Google has indexed his link above yours.
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  • Profile picture of the author alistair
    So basically what you are saying is that your still at no 1 and everything is exactly the same excpet for the fact that your url has been replaced by a affiliates url? I think what has happened is that possibly when google spider came to view your site again you also had a visitor viewing it at the same time google was there and the visito came via the affiliates link and unfortunately the url showing was the one including their hoplink, and so that url has now been indexed.
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    • Profile picture of the author BenSalez
      Originally Posted by alistair View Post

      So basically what you are saying is that your still at no 1 and everything is exactly the same excpet for the fact that your url has been replaced by a affiliates url? I think what has happened is that possibly when google spider came to view your site again you also had a visitor viewing it at the same time google was there and the visito came via the affiliates link and unfortunately the url showing was the one including their hoplink, and so that url has now been indexed.
      How do I make this go away?
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  • Profile picture of the author Sandra Martinez
    Originally Posted by BenSalez View Post

    To my shock and dismay my organic listing in google for my staple clickbank product is listing as a hoplink for an affiliate!!!!!

    How can I correct this, this a huge mistake! I need the listing to register for my domain without a hoplink. Are any other CB vendors having this issue?

    Thanks,

    Ben
    Try adding a sitemap with the right url for your home, or add a hop=0. And submit the sitemap xml to Google.
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    Coloring book niche? I have a proposal for you.
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    • Profile picture of the author GeckoTribe
      I can think of two possible fixes. One is to redirect from the hop link to the URL without a hoplink. For example, if your page is a PHP page (I'll use the sbachell's screenshot for an example...which I see it not an PHP page...but could be changed), you could do this:

      Code:
      <?php
if (isset($_GET['hop'])) {
        header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
        header('Expires: 0');
        header('Location: /Pinksheetpicks.html');
        return;
}
?>
      The point of the Expires header is to prevent web browsers from bypassing legitimate hoplinks if someone visits your site through a hoplink, and then comes back later through the same hoplink to buy. You could omit that, but you'd be ripping some of your affiliates off.

      The other option would be to add a canonical link tag to your page:

      Code:
      <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.pennychase.com/Pinksheetpicks.html" />
      This tells Google that the "correct" URL of the page is the one without "?hop=0".

      BTW, sbachell, BenSalez is right -- the link shown in your screenshot isn't an affiliate link. "?hop=0" is the link coming from ClickBank's marketplace.
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  • Profile picture of the author Microsys
    Ideally affiliates should help you cover a broader range of marketing methods and not actually beat you in organic results at your primary keyword. If that is the case then...

    If you own the website, you can denie those URLs in robots.txt containing hop... That would be one solution. You could also make sure to use redirects in case they come from Google. Or maybe use canonical to help Google know which URL is the correct. Many options.
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