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No-follow Affiliate Links

by adamcm
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all,

This is probably quite an old question but after some searching i'm not quite sure I understand if I should or should not be adding a no follow tag to my affiliate links? I am a product based marketer so I put up products on my sites for various merchants. I cloak them using GoCodes, so my URL will look like: http://sitename.com/go/product_name . Should I be adding a no-follow tag to these? Are these links serving as backlinks to the merchant I work for?

Thanks!
#affiliate #links #nofollow
  • Profile picture of the author adamcm
    Just wanted to bump this, anyone know?
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  • Profile picture of the author hicksdelight
    I always add no follow to my affiliate links. just have always done it that way.
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  • Profile picture of the author dadamson
    It won't really make a huge difference either way.

    Either way, it is always going to be a backlink for the merchant, but that is no issue.

    By adding the "nofollow" tag you are essentially telling the search engines that you are not voting for the source website through your link.

    The nofollow tag will also retain your Google PR on your website and will not allow it to flow through to the source website.

    I use nofollow affiliate links (when I remember), but either way it does not make too much difference.

    You are possibly retaining any link juice on your page rather than allowing it to 'fall' through a do follow link so it does help ever so slightly in the rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author smilika
    Yes, they can serve as backlinks. Add no-follow to your links, its not hard. Though it will not make a big difference either way. You will supposedly save some link juice and tell google that you do not want to send some juice to the merchants site.

    Anyways, many people speculate that no-follow links still hold a lot of weight, but as I wrote - its not hard to add the no-follow code to links.
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    I make my own luck. That means I am fully responsible for everything that happened or is going to happened in my life.

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    • Profile picture of the author adamcm
      Thanks all! Looks like I have some work to do. Right now I get an ugly link from a place like Commission Junction, enter it into GoCodes and put that URL into my site.

      1 - Will this still send link juice to the merchant?
      2 - Is there an easy way to quickly apply the No-follow tag to some of my large sites that are 100+ pages?
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      • Profile picture of the author smilika
        Originally Posted by adamcm View Post

        1 - Will this still send link juice to the merchant?
        This is basically the same question as the last one, and the answer is the same You can not escape sending at least some juice to the merchant.

        But I would like you to note that 1 link from 100 sites is worth way more than 100 links from one site, so it doesn't really matter that much that you have so many links pointing to the merchant, especially if they are no-follow.

        Just don't worry about this issue


        As for question 2, I have never had a similar issue and can't help you there, sorry
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        I make my own luck. That means I am fully responsible for everything that happened or is going to happened in my life.

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      • Profile picture of the author dadamson
        Originally Posted by adamcm View Post

        Thanks all! Looks like I have some work to do. Right now I get an ugly link from a place like Commission Junction, enter it into GoCodes and put that URL into my site.

        1 - Will this still send link juice to the merchant?
        2 - Is there an easy way to quickly apply the No-follow tag to some of my large sites that are 100+ pages?
        1 - Yes
        2- Try this plugin which changes all external links to nofollow links: WordPress › WP No External Links « WordPress Plugins
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  • Profile picture of the author DPM70
    I still use "pretty link" because it serves a number of purposes (mostly stated above) with ease of use thrown in.

    a) It will attribute "no follow"
    b) It will make an ugly affiliate link look nicer
    c) It gives stats on clickthroughs
    d) It's a simple plugin that I add to all my sites and it does all of the above very smartly and efficiently.
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    I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. - Ayn Rand
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  • Profile picture of the author ghazia
    Link juice may pass or not, that may be a secondary issue. Why should you provide a link to an external site?
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  • Profile picture of the author juanlawry1
    If your site will be linked then i will bump on your profile for great job.
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