Are Affiliate Links Good For SEO? | Everything you need to know

Affiliate-Links-Good-For-SEO

Affiliate links provide the opportunity to monetise your website by linking out to other websites via links that are unique to your website.

However, some people ask whether or not affiliate links impact SEO and how to manage them in the right way.

In this article, we will explore the pros and cons of using affiliate links and provide some tips on how to make the most of them.

what is an affiliate link

Affiliate links are used by advertisers to track traffic onto a website. When a visitor lands on a page via a specific URL generated via an affiliate program, this, in turn, generates revenue every time that URL is clicked on.

There are other agreements that will have other revenue structures – for instance, for every x amount of visitors, the affiliate website will receive a commission.

What is an affiliate site?

Affiliate websites are sites that promote other people’s products. The user does not own these items, but they can make money by promoting them through affiliate links and earning a commission on sales made from their site or email list.

Generally, an affiliate site focuses on one niche, like pets for instance. These websites are made up primarily of various product reviews that list the pros and cons of products. They will then link to the products via an affiliate link where they will earn a commission as a result.

Affiliate websites are a great way to generate revenue without the need to actually hold any stock and deal with the fulfillment of orders. Instead, you are paid via the commission you earn per click or per sale.

Affiliate website example

What is an affiliate program?

An affiliate program is where an online merchant pays you for links from your site to his. usually, he only gets paid when someone actually makes their purchase as a result of that advertising link.

Affiliate programs are designed as a way to promote services and offers and can be a great way for a business to increase its online exposure.

Affiliate programs were an initiative that was originally pioneered by Amazon. They offer unique merchant ID’s for affiliate partners who have their own websites. This kind of marketing is beneficial for both parties.

Say for instance, if you are an affiliate partner and you had your own website, you could review a product on Amazon and when your readers go through the review and come to click on the reviewed product, this would then send you to the Amazon product page via that unique URL. The affiliate partner would receive a commission whilst Amazon benefits as it provides more eyes on the products they sell.

Will Affiliate Programs Help or Hurt Your SEO?

Affiliate programs will generally not hurt your SEO as long as you add the links responsibly.

If for instance, you stuff your content with a lot of spammy looking affiliate links and do not really serve any purpose for your users, then this will certainly hurt your SEO efforts.

If you are actively earning money through the link, then you should also look to add the rel=sponsored tag to your links.

Conclusion

To conclude, are affiliate links good for SEO? They generally do not have any direct impact on rankings and you should not rely on them if using them as a way to directly rank your website.

However, if built effectively and strategically, then I believe that there are certainly indirect benefits that can be had from affiliate links. You should place them only when necessary, do not make them a distraction from your content and the value that you are providing your readers with.

But certainly, affiliate links can be a great way to generate some direct revenue for your online business and can be an effective marketing channel.

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