Best way to link to an affiliate site.

[jafabel]

I have a site that promotes a single affiliate product. Would it be better to have a "buy" button in the content that goes straight to the external affiliates website or should I send it all to an internal page that redirects thus only having 1 external link to the product site.

[AdiRste]

A buy button within content is sufficient.

[StalkerB]

You're looking to mask your affiliate links to preserve link juice, yeah? I'd consider masking the links for a couple of reasons.

Have a quick read of this - http://www.wolf-howl.com/affiliate-marketing/cloaking-affiliate-links/ - and maybe this will help too (if you're on Wordpress) - http://yoast.com/affiliate-links-and-seo/

If you need more specifics on how to do it, then ask away.

[jafabel]

I am using WordPress so the article from yoast is great. The link juice is one part but I have spent time building the site and content to build the visitors trust before the are sent off to make a purchase at a different site but if a bot is going to only notice the same external link in the content of every site, I am afraid it may have an adverse effect on ranking despite Google's claims to the contrary.

[StalkerB]

Michael Gray does talk about that in the first article, along with making things easier to update if you want to change where the link goes, so there are some valid reasons for doing it