Affiliate Website Slapping

[CayenneRed89]

Hi There

I recently launched a very large website - rich in good  quality content, nice design and good onsite SEO.

The website is a 100 + pages and gives the user informative content.

In terms of SEO and linking building - a few guest posts, PR's and directories have been submitted.

All links have been relevant and quality.  No spam links used at all and the number of links submitted has been very low. Only a handful..

We have seen a significant drop in rankings and I am scratching my head as to why.

My worry is that Google has slapped us for having an affiliate link on the website.

Each page - except the homepage has one advert on them.  The advert includes an affiliate link.

Does anyone have any recent experience of affiliate websites been slapped?

Can anyone help???

Much Appreciated

[RebekahMay]

There are some theories that pages with affiliate links suffer in rankings, but I haven't seen anything conclusive. It happens that many of those sites are also poor quality.

Depending on the press releases and directories you chose, those could be your issue.  Sometime in July Google stated they are going to crack down on links earned from press releases:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

"Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites."

Many directories are seen as spam by search engines because it isn't naturally obtained. In that same page linked above, it states "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links".

An article about links from press releases from searchengineland:

http://searchengineland.com/google-links-in-a-press-release-should-be-nofollowed-like-advertisements-168339

It is hard to say for certain without seeing the site, the press releases, or the directory links but that might provide some insight.  It also could depend on how recent your launch was, rankings can be volatile for new sites.

[Digital-Diameter]

Advertisements can definitely reduce the quality of your website in Google's eyes, however, if your site as a whole is informative, 100+ pages and optimized as you described, I might take a quick look at over optimization of link anchor text or the site for competitive keywords. Definitely check WMT for any warnings from G as well and, be aware, that the Hummingbird algorithm just rolled out.

Also, are the affiliate links set to rel=no follow?