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Hi there, Any reputable affiliate should be adding nofollow to outbound links, and I would be concerned if they weren't. Even if PR isn't passed on 302s, what's stopping the affiliate from making them 301s or simply direct links in future? Blocking GoogleBot using robots.txt on landing pages isn't going to stop Google indexing URLs it finds - you would have to use canonicals or noindex on the page for that. Even that wouldn't negate the impact of inbound links from potentially "toxic" websites. I would say that you can't have your cake and eat it. If you're getting traffic and sales from these affiliate links then they're good for business. However there's a good chance if the sites are poorly regarded by Google, and they aren't using nofollow on the links that you will be penalised in organic listings. I have used affiliates in the past, and learnt to keep them on a tight leash. If you're concerned about your link profile I can recommend using cognitiveseo.com to analyse it. Regards George

Hi We use a company called Awin (Affiliate Window) in the UK and they are very good. As far as I am aware there is no two way affiliates, but the easiest way round it is, to set your self up as a publisher and advertiser. Its quite easy to do, and you could be up and running as an a publisher in minutes. Thanks Andy

Thank you - I didn't know Moz had a network. I'll look into it, but I think we need a UK company purely because the products we sell are for the UK market only (mortgages) so need to get in front of a UK audience... However, I'm saying this without even checking it out! I will, thank you! Am most grateful for your comment! I must admit to being a little disappointed not to have had any more input from fellow mozzers, but I can't complain: I don't always answer questions myself so would be somewhat hypocritical to complain, don't you think? Please - if anyone has any nuggets of info they are happy to share about being an affiliate advertiser don't be shy!

Actually, screamingfrog should take care of it for you via the custom spider configuration.  If you select "custom" under the "configuration" tab, you can drop in the html for the links you are looking for and it will give you a report with what pages it finds that code on. For example, have screammingfrog search for the following snippet of code and it would find nofollow links pointing at mysite.com: rel="nofollow" href="http://mysite.com

Just make sure you no follow them.  If the links were do follow it could be seen as a paid link scheme - I know that sounds quite contrived, but that is how Google might (and has) viewed affiliate links that pass link equity in the past.  They are, in effect, paid links that may help improve organic visibility. You don't want to risk being a part of that "link scheme", so make sure you no follow your links.  It does seem quite absurd I know and you'd think that common sense would prevail if someone was using affiliate links and wasn't aware of the SEO ramifications, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

With lack of information, you should certainly ask for references, portfolio of work, etc. Have them provide you with a basic outline of what they recommend and how they are going to move forward, and get a second opinion. In the end of the day, find someone you trust and you believe you can rely on them, from word of mouth, reputation, and references. It's like going to a doctor, you don't know the information yourself, but you know you have someone you can rely on due to their expertise. I would also recommend getting a basic knowledge of SEO - you can read the beginners guide here on Moz. There are lots of great resources to get an elementary understanding so you'll be more educated and capable of guiding the SEO company you work with. If all else fails, take some of their recommendations and ask here on the forum or on similar sites what the community thinks about the recommendations and advice you've received. Good luck!

It's highly unlikely that someone using your content would outrank you for your own content in English in the US. It usually works the other way around - others are commonly filtered out in favor of the original publisher. You could, in theory, use hreflang tags. This isn't really the intended use, so I'm not sure what the results would be. In order for it to work, you'd both need to reference all the other versions of the page from every pageeither in a sitemap (better idea) or in the . E.g. you point to them as en-cn and they point to your page with en-us and en-ca. Unless you have some extraordinarily savvy partners, this is probably going to be a mess. Your partners can help avoid the mess above if they go into Webmaster Tools under "Search Traffic >> International Targeting" and choose a location they want to target. All of this is likely unnecessary if they have (for example) a .cn domain and you have a .com domain. Google will probably figure out the most relevant page to show on its own. That's what you're looking for, if I understand correctly. If you have US/CA partners, your options are more limited, and there's less room to mutually benefit. You can request they canonical back, but that completely eliminates their ranking ability. You could request a link, but even that request might not go over well. (I wouldn't do it) Amazon often outranks the original product sellers - and that's just the price you pay sometimes when you sell through others.

I would not purchase a domain just to immediately redirect it, no. If it was me, I would set up a highly focused landing page on the domain, or a mini-site full of information related to the domain that then links out to your main site. Just buying up domains hoping someone will type it in and be redirected will not work. As a stand-alone redirected domain there is little value UNLESS it was a high-ranking high authority domain before you redirected it, at which point there can be some SEO value. If you choose to go the landing page route, here is a pretty nice guide. Super awesome link

Hi Vasso, can you please share the link for the Woocommerce Google XML Feed plugin you propose using? Thanks in advance, Babis

Hi Lynn, I'll be sure to update our webteam so we can tackle this. Thank you!

I don't know much about the various types of affiliate software, so I'll leave that to the experts. But I can tell you what Google says (at least publicly) about the "SEO value" of links on the sites of your affiliates. At an SMX conference, Matt Cutts (Google's head of web spam) said that Google essentially knows how to "handle" the major affiliate networks but that affiliate marketers may want to add nofollow tags just in case. (See the YouTube video.) What does "handle" mean? I would suggest that it's Google's aim NOT to have such affiliate links pass "credit" to the original site because Google views them essentially as paid links or links that are not placed naturally and editorially. Cutts suggestion to use nofollow is a way to stop this from happening for any smaller affiliate network that Google might not know about. Short version? I'd be highly skeptical of any claim that affiliate links help your "SEO." Sounds like snake oil. Given enough time, I project Google will become good enough that any link that is not 100% earned (rather than built) through good old-fashioned marketing and PR will not help websites (and may, in fact, hurt them). Moz also has a good post here with some affiliate SEO suggestions and further commentary on the issue.

Eric, thanks for the question -- I wish I had seen this a lot earlier! But for your client's next event or anyone else who's reading, here's what I would do for an event: public relations. This is the best way to build the client's brand, obtain exposure, and "earn" quality, authoritative links indirectly. My post at Moz here goes into the basics of PR strategy in a digital context, but I'll add some thoughts here specifically for your context. 1. Goal identification -- I presume, in the end, that the goal is consumer sales of this product? 2. Audience Research -- What types of people would be interested in such a product? What interests them? What is their demographic profile? 3. Positioning and Messaging -- How can you position and brand your company and product in a way that would appeal to that audience? How can you take that general positioning and then create messaging (text, images, and so on) to communicate that positioning? 4. Media List Creation -- Here's where the conference comes in. I'd do the research to answer this question: What news outlets, publications, and blogs both are read by the target audience and will attend the conference? Who are the specific reporters and writers that will be at the conference. 5. Press Release Development & Pitching -- Before the conference, craft news releases, media kits, and more based on your positioning and messaging. Pitch to the journalists beforehand and invite them to the booth for an interview. In some contexts, you may want to grant an exclusive to the biggest outlet on your media list in exchange for a guarantee that they will write about you prominently. I know that it may seem weird to talk about PR on a site that focuses mainly on online marketing, but I'm personally starting to feel that the "SEO" world is rapidly moving away from keywords and links and more towards just doing traditional "marketing." And part of that involves PR. I hope this may help!

Have you read this YouMoz about white-hat link building in the gambling industry? http://moz.com/blog/case-study-whitehat-link-building-in-the-gambling-industry Edit: Just realized the original question is from 2011, so I don't imagine the OP had a time machine to see that post.

Thank you David. This information helps.

Thanks Matt, Andy, Looking at how they've had automated link building done to every page on their domain it does look like it's automated link building gone wrong. You don't normally see so many boring product pages getting as many links as they have! It wouldn't surprise me if were trying to supply the sitemap.xml or rss feed as a list of target URLs to build links to and ended up building links directly to these.

Hi Andy, Thank you for fast reply. Regards, Juris

.htaccess processes requests received by your webserver.   It doesn't process HTML sent to the client, so it can't affect those affiliate links.

Arbitrageurs killed the penny Adwords clicks about ten years ago.  Today, I think that you will be lucky to find any clicks that go for less than ten cents each. Today you can find a SERP with huge traffic and no ads.  You will think "I can get cheap clicks there".  They do not exist.  Google will run your ads for a few thousand impressions and then force you to bid an amazing price.