There has been much talk of how affiliate links affect a website’s page rank and listing on the search engine Google.  The advent of advanced affiliate marketing tools such as ProfitBite has further complicated this situation.  This article goes through how to avoid losing your page rank with Google whilst participating in affiliate marketing.

Traditional Affiliate Networks and Google

Traditional affiliate marketing stipulates that links point to an affiliate network’s website.  After a series of redirects, the user will end up on an retailer or merchant’s website.  The redirects at the affiliate network are typically “http/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” redirects.  Google will follow these redirects, and end up on the retailer’s website.  In this way, you are contributing to the link juice of that retailer.

Automatic Affiliate Marketing and Google

With an automatic affiliate marketing tool like ProfitBite, the links to retailer’s are created directly to the retailer.  ProfitBite intercepts clicks on these links with JavaScript and automatically converts them to affiliated tracked links.  Google doesn’t follow JavaScript links.  Since the ultimate target for the links is the retailer’s website, links redirected through ProfitBite will contribute to the link juice of the retailer in the same way as standard affiliate links.

ProfitBite can also be configured to insert links into a website using JavaScript where the retailer’s brand name is mentioned.  Since the links never exist in a static context, Google will not index these links.  These links will therefore not affect a website’s Google ranking.

If users specifically request it, ProfitBite will function with links that use the “rel=nofollow” attribute to stop Google following links.

Will Google Penalize me for Affiliate Linking?

The body of evidence at the moment points to Google not detrimentally penalizing websites for creating affiliated links to retailers.  However, link spamming will reduce your Google ranking.

The best practice is to always to link to relevant content.  If links originate from valuable, relevant, trust-worthy sources then there will be no detrimental effect to your Google ranking.

Further useful information on Google can be found at:

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Nick Woolley
Nick is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
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