Choosing an Affiliate Software & Link SEO-Value

[Harbor_Compliance]

Hello everyone.  I'm looking for recommendations for affiliate software.  I'm also curious if there is any truth in the "SEO-value" that some softwares are touting as a benefit.

Choosing a Software:

This Moz Blog Article says to build it yourself.  However, I'm inclined to use an out-of-the-box software for  advanced features such as real-time analytics for the affiliate, w-9/1099 processing, etc.

MozPerks promotes hasoffers.com which seems overly pricey ($230/month with perk discount) and OMNISTAR who just left me on hold for 10 minutes (and still no anwer from their sales department).

So I'm still looking.  Any recommendations?

SEO-value of Links from Affiliates:

Here's an example of what OMNISTAR claims about the SEO value of the way they structure the links from affiliate sites to my site. I hear a variation on this pitch from each software and none of them seem to agree.

• Does Google want me to clearly tag promotional vs. editorial links?

• Is there SEO-value in promotional links on affiliate sites or is that a load of bologna?

Thanks a bunch!

[SamuelScott]

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.