Nofollow affiliate links?

[SamCUK]

Hi Guys,

Simple question. Should I nofollow affiliate links on my site. Will it help SEO at all?

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi Sam,

Here are my two cents..if I feel my visitors will benefit from the page that I linked to, I don't mind following the link. For example, when I link to a page on Wikipedia, I won't add the nofollow attribute. This is a good gesture from a webmaster. Coming to the affiliate links (no matter how important are they to my visitors) as most of the time, my intention is to make some extra money in the form of commissions, I would definitely have the links nofollowed.

I want to be very, very cautious while linking out to external web properties and even more cautious and conservative when it comes to sharing my link juice with other domains. Unless the other domains are very authoritative and extremely useful, I go with nofollow.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi

[White.net]

As Devanur said, just be cautious of the sites that you are linking and have a look at their stats (DA, PR etc) to make sure they're okay.

[TomRayner]

I have a slightly different approach when it comes to affiliate links.

With an affiliate link, someone is ultimately getting paid to promote the product.  It might be straight away or it might be on a CPA or shared revenue basis, but the fact is that an affiliate link is a paid link.

Google's very clear on its stance on paid links and I believe that it treats all affiliate links in this category.  Therefore, I believe you should nofollow any and all affiliate links that you have, or conversely get people who are linking to you with their affiliate link to do so with nofollow links as well.  You're already paying them/being paid to link to the product in the first place, you don't want to be seen as being paid to promote the site via SEO as well, otherwise will come down on your hard.

Don't leave it to chance - nofollow affiliate links.

Hope this helps.

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

Would always be nofollow, its the affiliate network which actually gets the benefit and not the end website. (or it is with the network we use).

Plus as mentioned above they are paid links so don't risk getting penalised by promoting paid link. Not worth taking the risk when nofollow doesnt affect any commission you can make of the link.

[SamCUK]

Thanks guys for your advice. Am I best to no follow individual links or do it in the meta tag? If I no follow all links on a page will it stop internal link flow around my site. I have some pointers to relevant pages on my site in the bod of the text.