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?
- What is an affiliate link?
- What is an affiliate site?
- What is an affiliate program?
- Do affiliate links have SEO value?
- Will Affiliate Programs Help or Hurt Your SEO?
- What is a rel=sponsored link?
- How to build affiliate links correctly for search engines?
- Conclusion
An affiliate link is a particular URL that contains the name of an online merchant and their ID.
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.
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.
Do affiliate links have SEO value?
Whilst affiliate marketing can be a great sales channel for your business, I often get asked whether affiliate links have any SEO value.
When comparing affiliate links to your everyday backlinks, they do differ slightly and the way in which Google handles them also differs.
The purpose of an affiliate link is to drive money or sales and not necessarily pass authority or relevance. Websites only put the link in place because they are getting some financial reward for doing so, either a commission or a direct sale. This means that it is a link that has not really been built organically or editorially and generally, Google tries to keep them separate.
That being said, if a lot of people are interacting and engaging with your affiliate links and they have been built in a way that helps the user, then this is a signal of good web design practice and in the long term, may have some indirectly positive impact on your rankings.
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.
What is a rel=sponsored link?
In order to help Google qualify the links on your page, you need to ensure that they are tagged correctly.
According to Google, you should add the “rel=sponsored” tag to any link with the purpose of generating direct revenue for your business.
Your affiliate links should look something like this:
“<a rel=”sponsored” href=”https://cheese.example.com/Appenzeller_cheese”>Appenzeller</a>”
This helps Google differentiate the types of links on your website. Every link serves a different purpose so helping Google understand this will ensure that the links you want to pass direct ranking signals will still serve their purpose.
How to build affiliate links correctly for search engines?
In order to build effective affiliate links both for search engines and Google, there are a few things that you should look to consider before adding them to your live site.
You want your readers to still benefit and this means building organic looking links that actually serve a purpose. If you have put together a big review or guide talking about specific products where you could potentially earn a commission, then this is going to be a great way to do it. It shows that the link has a purpose and if a lot of people interact with the links, then this will certainly help your rankings.
So long as the links don’t look spammy, you have added the tags to the links that you need to and your readers are genuinely benefiting from the information you are providing, then this will certainly stand you in a good position to increase your organic ranking presence.
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.
