does link building with affiliate programs work? if so, does anyone know of any affiliate tracking software that is particularly useful for link building campaigns? i know there is myaffiliateprogram.com which allows you to direct users straight to your domain name if you have a certain javascript file on your server, but i was curious as to what else is out there and what other experiences people have had.

Most programs will make you link to their servers, for example Commission Junction (CJ.com) will make links go to www.qksrv.com/tracking-codes. That does NOT help your link building campaigns at all.

Then there are companies that have their own programs with tracking links like www.domain.com/index.php?trackid=1234 and that will be able to give you partial credit to the domain. However keep in mind that search engines look at each URL as a distinct link, so the one above will be different than www.domain.com and www.domain.com/index.php.

In short answer, it most like does not help as much as a regular link building campaing that has no tracking restrictions.

they do help establish your brand, but the only way to get the direct links is to do the tracking on your end...the problem with that is that some browsers might not send the data all the time and that requires a bunch of trust on the other side of that link for all of the referal stuff to be internal...that is part of the reason why there are big third party sites...to get past that trust issue.

Another reason why this might not be a particularly fruitful idea: The point of starting an aff. prog. is to sell your products through your affiliate base.

I cant see many affiliates being overly pleased knowing that your aff. prog. is just in place to build link pop :)

Nick

www.groundbreak.com runs on your server and is CHEAP

Not all that pretty but I run one program with it and with hundreds of active affiliates and nobody has complained about the look and feel. We set it up to creat links like https://domain.com/g.o/youchooseyourID

does link building with affiliate programs work?

I had an interesting discussion at SES with a company called LinkConnector, an affiliate network with technology that gets around the tracking url problem (with regard to link credit). I was impressed by their presentation. I'd be curious what thoughts others have about their network.

I cant see many affiliates being overly pleased knowing that your aff. prog. is just in place to build link pop.

I'm guessing that this would be true for the top affiiliates who are SEOs... but perhaps not so important for many sites out there that are generally in your field and in the aggregate might produce some supplementary traffic and, with the right technology, help with backlinks.

Which group you want to attract depends, I would think, on whether the affiliates are your primary marketing plan or whether you're an SEO yourself.

I had an interesting discussion at SES with a company called LinkConnector, an affiliate network with technology that gets around the tracking url problem (with regard to link credit). I was impressed by their presentation. I'd be curious what thoughts others have about their network.



wow. that looks like a godsend. but i'm skeptical of the company based on their site -- looks like it could be a guy in a basement, as the site was a little too thin, there was no pricing info, and no phone number for inquiries. do you know anything more about this company, robert? the technology has certainly piqued my interest.

but the only way to get the direct links is to do the tracking on your end...

Thats not entirely true. You can have a direct link and use a on-unload event or a onclick event to trigger a tracking server. However, you won't get CJ to made that change :)

...i'm skeptical of the company based on their site -- looks like it could be a guy in a basement... do you know anything more about this company, robert? the technology has certainly piqued my interest.

I don't know a lot about the company, but I can tell you from their presence in the trade show at SES San Jose that they're definitely not just "a guy in a basement." I was extremely impressed by the people I talked to. They clearly had already thought through every single question I raised.

While I'm by no means experienced in the affiliate area, I have paid some attention over the years to the linking problem, anticipating eventually that I'd have a client that would need help in this area. And yes, they've piqued my interest too.

Thats not entirely true. You can have a direct link and use a on-unload event or a onclick event to trigger a tracking server. However, you won't get CJ to made that change :)

mikkel, do you know of any 3rd party affiliate tracking systems that would accomodate such a change?

regarding linkconnector.com, i got a response from them; they charge 20% of the payout to the affiliate. i believe cj.com charges 30%. myaffiliateprogram is well priced at just $50 per month after a $1,000 set up fee.

the reply i got from linkconnector was prompt and thorough. i did some more research on the company -- definitely looks like a smart bunch of folks.

Here, here Nick. You can get all the affiliate links you want, but it wont do anything for you no matter what system you use if its not converting and the affiliates aren't being taken care of. Trying to use affiliates as a stepping stone to top ranks probably isn't the best method. And any decent affiliate will see through it and take measures to prevent it (link popularity transfer) from happening.

of course -- a bogus affiliate program wont make money for very long if at all. there's no denying that. but if you can get a legitimate program up and running, why not execute in a way that will help SEO as well? if you are a good merchant you can attract many affiliates, and if everyone is adding value and making money, i dont think link popularity transferring will be considered as a huge and detrimental issue.

"why not execute in a way that will help SEO as well"

Oh, you certainly can, but in all honesty, when I work a program, I am targeting the top spot. Be sure to keep that in mind. You could end up recruiting affiliates who will smack the merchant site in the SERPs. If the goal of the affiliate program is SEO and not increased sales and advertising, they may find themselves disappointed.

And, as I said, with scumware, norton issues and the like, many affiliates are cloaking links and not transferring the value. Then you have the affiliates who will become their competition on PPC on everything except their brand (as this is the only term the merchant can control). Unless you disallow PPC all together, which will drive away a ton of affiliates.

As an affiliate, I don't like to hear merchants thinking they can use me as a part of their link development campaign. If they want more sales, then affiliates can be their execution to that point. But, starting an affiliate program by selling it to the merchant for their SEO value may leave a potential disappointment lurking - especially when affiliates end up taking the top ten slots on some of the terms the merchant is going for ;).

My name is Choots Humphries and I am the president of LinkConnector. I was hoping to address and clarify some of the issues brought up in this thread.

While we are a brand new affiliate network, we have been building our product for almost 2 years. We built the network from the ground up to address some of the concerns (including SEO concerns) with existing affiliate programs. We are by no means a basement company although I would tend to agree our site is a little thin on the surface currently and may leave that initial impression. We have nine employees in three states (NC, CO, and CA) that have worked hard to build (what we believe is) the best affiliate network today. While we have spent most of our time to date making our affiliate network engine the best in the market, we are now turning to marketing efforts which will include a site build out to include more about our company, our products, and better contact information.

We are an affiliate network designed to help merchants build and administer an affiliate program. An affiliate program that does not generate sales is not effective for the affiliate, merchant, or affiliate network. At its base, any affiliate program must work for all three for the relationship to be long standing. The purpose of our product is not to help companies build link popularity or to facilitate the transfer of page rank. Instead, back link credit is simply something that can be a byproduct of an effective (and well-producing) affiliate program with our Naked Link Technology(tm). As far as we know, no other affiliate program (including those mentioned in this thread which are installed on a merchant’s server) accomplishes this. If a link has a ‘?’, you are not going to get back link credit.

If anybody wishes to discuss our technologies or products, please feel free to contact me (choots.humphries@linkconnector.com) at 919.468.5150, our CTO (Ernie St. Gelais – ernie.st.gelais@linkconnector.com) at 719.594.9657, or our Director of Marketing (Candice Jackson – candice.jackson@linkconnector.com) at 719.548.9890. We will also be attending the next three scheduled SES shows as an exhibitor and I would encourage any reader to stop by our booth.

Choots Humphries
President, LinkConnector Corporation

thanks for the info choots! sounds interesting.

I invested a few tens of thousands of USD on CJ working their program hard.
This did give some results.
Some CJ merchants will write about your company and offering outside the link. This will in turn be picket up by others, basically you are getting exposure and exposure can lead to more exposure.

To my great regret we had to abandon our CJ program. CJ where not able to control the amount of fraudulent leads and sales that where coming in from Asia and Eastern Europe. It came to a point where the cost of filtering the leads and fighting with Visa and Mastercard about chargebacks from CJ transactions just was not worth it.

I am looking for a new program and will look into Linkconnector.

2 of the affiliate tracking programs that I know of that use direct links and therefore pass PR are:
Ultralinks by Fusion Quest (http://www.ultra-affiliate-software.com/?fusion) and MyAP (http://www.myap.com) from Kowbunga.

Ultralink really specializes in unique tracking and helping PR. With Myap, which is one of the top 2 leading affiliate programs IMHO, I believe you need to pay to add the option to run the links directly through your own URL. One of the other benefits to MYAP is that once you have their software you can be added to their new network - www.kolimbo.com and their directory www.affiliatecash.com at no additional charge.

I am an affiliate advocate and management consultant so here's my opionion on the issue. I don't believe anyone should set up an affiliate program just for the PR. However if you want an affiliate program for all the right reasons and you take great care of your affiliate partners and pro-actively manage the program, then I don't think direct linking is such a bad thing.

One other benefit of direct linking to your own URL instead of a 3rd party program or network, is that apps that block affiliate links and eat or block cookies won't affect you OR your affiliate's revenue.

Examples being Norton - http://www.5staraffiliateprograms.com/norton-blocks-revenue.html
and all the anti-spyware, anti-adware and firewall programs that block either links or cookies from most of the popular networks.

Hope this helps and best of luck!
Linda

Good ponts, Linda!

[QUOTE=5starAffiliatePrograms]2 of the affiliate tracking programs that I know of that use direct links and therefore pass PR are:
Ultralinks by Fusion Quest (http://www.ultra-affiliate-software.com/?fusion) and MyAP (http://www.myap.com) from Kowbunga.

I believe myaffiliate program routes people to the merchant's domain name, but each affiliate is given a unique ID to attach to the end of the merchant's domain name when directing users to that site. isnt that the case?

Hi kidmercury and all,

I just did a quick check to be sure what I said was correct. Grabbed a link from one of our new MYAP clients that does not use direct links yet.

Here is a straight myap link for Wild Divine.
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com/u/wdivine/up.asp?id=1201

Here is a "direct" MYAP link for Everyticket another client.
http://everyticket.com/index.html?kbid=14783

There are several different options that are add-ons to MYAP that will accomplish direct linking. Contact me if you want some free advice on the best way to go and/or I can refer you to my friend over there that will help you figure out the best option for your needs.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

As long as there is only one query string it should be okay... it is the presence of multiple tracking elements beyond a basic ? that has a tendency to create stops from the spiders... they don't like + = % and other symbols added to a URL.

As long as there is only one query string it should be okay... it is the presence of multiple tracking elements beyond a basic ? that has a tendency to create stops from the spiders... they don't like + = % and other symbols added to a URL.

If I understand this correctly... while the spiders might follow beyond the question mark, the engines will see "index.html?kbid=14783" and "index.html" as different pages, and the desired link credit really won't be accruing to "index.html." It will be credited to the page with the tracking string in its url.

All of these pages with tracking strings become essentially mirrors of index.html, and only one of the pages will survive in Google's index, generally the one with the highest PR. The pages won't be helping each other very much, if it all... though I suppose some PR transmitted via index.html?kbid=14783 etc to other pages in the site would come back to index.html.

Don't use the tracking URL as landing page. Use a 301 redirect from the tracking script to the final landing page and you should be OK. Just don't use a 302 and you'll end up with all the affiliate links in the index (just had such a case with a client)

One thing no one's brought up yet is the danger of even having affiliate-based URLs. Whether they're 301 redirected, launch tracking scripts or anything else, those URLs do have the ability to get ranked in the search engines. I had one client who was ranked number 2 on their primary keyword - and an affiliate URL (same exact webpage) was ranked number 1 because the affiliate site had a higher PageRank than the client's site - therefore the referral link counted for more than the client site by itself.

The best way to get around this issue is to use "no index" "no follow" on your affiliate URLs. That way, they won't end up ranked in the SEs - think of all that money you'd be paying out!

If you do that, the 301 redirect method mentioned earlier works quite well for tracking purposes, and still captures link popularity for your main site.

One thing no one's brought up yet is the danger of even having affiliate-based URLs. Whether they're 301 redirected, launch tracking scripts or anything else, those URLs do have the ability to get ranked in the search engines. I had one client who was ranked number 2 on their primary keyword - and an affiliate URL (same exact webpage) was ranked number 1 because the affiliate site had a higher PageRank than the client's site - therefore the referral link counted for more than the client site by itself.

The best way to get around this issue is to use "no index" "no follow" on your affiliate URLs. That way, they won't end up ranked in the SEs - think of all that money you'd be paying out!

If you do that, the 301 redirect method mentioned earlier works quite well for tracking purposes, and still captures link popularity for your main site.
I say let the affiliates jump into the fray... hey so they toss you from 1 to 2... it is another top spot your competitors can't get... I would love to see my site with 2 listings and 8 affiliate sites for my serious keywords fill up page one results!!!!!!!!!!!

Though I would push the affiliates to create independent pages that push traffic to me... not index.html?etc+ID=abc123 of my own site... I seriously doubt you get more than 2 listings on the SERPs ...

Hey AussieWebMaster, if you feel that way, more power to you! :) The company I was working with didn't want to pay out affiliate commissions for that top spot when the affiliate hadn't really earned it, so that was their concern.

"when the affiliate hadn't really earned it"

Hadn't really earned it? I'm confused by that statement. If I am reading correctly, an affiliate tossed the merchant out of the #1 spot, but didn't "earn" his payment?

chrisnrae

That line of thinking comes from a merchant that thinks of affiliates as lesser beings.

I'm sure that you know the way we deal with that attitude.

It wasn't that the affiliate site was ranked in the #1 position - that would be perfectly fair. It was that the affiliate URL was ranked #1 ahead of the main URL - the exact same page. For example, if www.suchandsuch.com was ranked #2, www.suchandsuch.com?AID=12345 was ranked #1. The affiliate was benefitting from the client's SEO work on their website.

Ok, that makes more sense then. Thats an issue of an SE being sloppy. I thought you meant affiliatedomain.com was outranking merchant.com and that they felt it wasn't earned. Ranking with merchant.com/?id is cheesy and a result of SE sloppiness more than likely ;).

OK then the SE should have their duplicate content filters checked.

It wasn't that the affiliate site was ranked in the #1 position - that would be perfectly fair. It was that the affiliate URL was ranked #1 ahead of the main URL - the exact same page. For example, if www.suchandsuch.com (http://www.suchandsuch.com) was ranked #2, www.suchandsuch.com?AID=12345 (http://www.suchandsuch.com?AID=12345) was ranked #1. The affiliate was benefitting from the client's SEO work on their website.
It is actually an example of the affiliate getting the page indexed first - the spider followed the affiliate's link to the page to spider it for whatever term it is being indexed for.

Actually, if you want to get super-technical about it, the client's site was actually indexed first on Google without the AID. What happened is that as the client's site rose through the ranks from the SEO work we were doing, the affiliate URL gained more ranking as well. The reason that the affiliate URL ended up ranked higher was because the affiliate's site (where the affiliate URL was located) had a high PageRank. That referral plus the client's SEO'd site counted for more than the client's SEO'd site alone.

Had we known then what we know now, we would have immediately slapped a "no index, no follow" tag on the affiliate URL. As soon as we did that, the affiliate URL dropped out of the index and the client's site was ranked #1.

Actually, if you want to get super-technical about it, the client's site was actually indexed first on Google without the AID. What happened is that as the client's site rose through the ranks from the SEO work we were doing, the affiliate URL gained more ranking as well. The reason that the affiliate URL ended up ranked higher was because the affiliate's site (where the affiliate URL was located) had a high PageRank. That referral plus the client's SEO'd site counted for more than the client's SEO'd site alone.

Had we known then what we know now, we would have immediately slapped a "no index, no follow" tag on the affiliate URL. As soon as we did that, the affiliate URL dropped out of the index and the client's site was ranked #1.
Interesting... I usually take for granted that the sponsor site has the high PR and the affiliates are lesser - though thinking about it there are all types of scenarios where this would be untrue.
You deal with your own situation long enough you tend to think through that perspective until you walk out of the box.

It wasn't that the affiliate site was ranked in the #1 position - that would be perfectly fair. It was that the affiliate URL was ranked #1 ahead of the main URL - the exact same page. For example, if www.suchandsuch.com was ranked #2, www.suchandsuch.com?AID=12345 was ranked #1. The affiliate was benefitting from the client's SEO work on their website.

What semchick is talking about should perhaps be the subject of another thread entirely... which is how Google is indexing meta refresh and 302 redirects, sometimes assigning the content of the destination page to the url of the page originating the redirect.

Because these redirects often occur in click-counting schemes, it is tangentially related to this topic, but the details probably should be discussed on another thread. I can't find a discussion on this forum, but I vaguely remember seeing one here. I was an early observer of the problem, which I mentioned on this thread at WebmasterWorld regarding a banner ad redirect:

Banner ad redirect-page indexed as mirror site by Google
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/16069.htm

Too many subsequent threads to detail them all. Here are several, which also contain links to other discussions:

Meta refresh leads to...
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/22754.htm

What about those redirects, copies, mirrors?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/23743.htm

As yet, the engines really haven't responded to the problem, which is clearly some sort of indexing bug. I've seen it on Google, Yahoo, and Gigablast. It mostly seems to happen when a higher PR page redirects to a lower PR page.

Currently, I would not knowingly accept a click-counting link to any page whose listing in the search engines I cared about. This includes links from banner ads, directory listings, and affiliate counting schemes.

I recently rewrote the tracking system for our affiliate program for this very purpose. Previously we had affilates link by going to http://www.ourchurch.com?ref=username. The new system has each affiliate link directly to http://www.ourchurch.com. Affiliates now also include the domain name of their website(s) in their affiliate settings. Then each time a visitor comes to the site the software checks the referring URL against all affilates' domain names and when there's a match the corresponding affiliate gets credit.

- Paul

Funny how some people view things. I did a free consult today for a merchant that said "I already have really good SE rankings and don't really want affiliates to compete with me in the natural search results."

I felt like saying well then why do you even want an affiliate program - but instead just went on to tell him that no matter how good he thinks his SEO is, there will be affiliates who are either better or who get more exposure for key phrases he didn't think to optimize for. Especially since he has a datafeed and we have lots of datafeed affiliates that know how slice and dice some pretty innovative feeds and get good results. No matter how you cut it he will get more sales. He finally realized that if he wants a bigger piece of the pie he has to pay for it, by paying partners for their efforts.

Linda

but each affiliate is given a unique ID to attach to the end of the merchant's domain name when directing users to that site. isnt that the case?

We resell MyAP in the UK (http://www.myap.co.uk) . The basic package links through the myaffillliateprogram domain, but for a $49 one off fee you get to link - as you say - where affiliates go direct to your domain with ?kbid=XXXX where XXXX is their ID number.

There is, however, a more powerful add on, which theoretically sets up an affiliate for EVERY unique referrer - including search engines. This sounds great, but in practice I tried it (it is in beta) and got 10,000 affiliates very quickly!

So - the question is - does adding ?kbid-XXXX to the end of a URL prevent PR passing?

So - the question is - does adding ?kbid-XXXX to the end of a URL prevent PR passing?

No, the problem is that it parse PR to another URL than the one you have (most likely) indexed in search engines. The URL you have indexed is most likely the one without the ?kbid-XXXX part. In that case it will be to different URLs to engines.

So, you need to do a server side 301 redirect from the URLs with the ?kbid-XXXX parameter and send people to the same URL without. There is a damping factor in most link theories so you will loose some value this way but it's still a lot better than having all affiliates link to another domain.

We resell MyAP in the UK (http://www.myap.co.uk) There is, however, a more powerful add on...So - the question is - does adding ?kbid-XXXX to the end of a URL prevent PR passing?

i think the real issue with the linking protocol noted above is that if you have the URL index.html, then affiliate # 1234 is linking to index.html?kbid=1234 instead of just index.html. as a result you are not concentrating your inbound link efforts. meaning the link the affiliate uses will technically be pointing to a different URL, and hence will pass PR value to a different URL. on a massive scale where you have say 500 affiliates and each one passes to their own customized URL, the value of the affiliate program from an SEO perspective would be virtually nullified.

Mik wrote:
a server side 301 redirect from the URLs with the ?kbid-XXXX

Unless playing funny games with PHP (which is not my forte), my hunch would be that assuming the URL without the ?kbid=xxxx exists, and should exist, given that it is (hopefully) nicely indexed, in order to return a 301 you would need to put some extra clever code on every page of the site to return the 301 when an affiliate was linking. In doing so, the javascript that needs to run to track the link for the affiliate's benefit would be missed as the actual page itself never loads. Or am I missing a techie fix here?

Dixon.

I just asked someone from MYAP to come and help address this issue. Figured some tech answers straight from the horses mouth were in order. I would hate to have anyone speculate and do something that could possibly cause links not to track. They should be here soon.

Linda

i think the real issue with the linking protocol noted above is that if you have the URL index.html, then affiliate # 1234 is linking to index.html?kbid=1234 instead of just index.html. as a result you are not concentrating your inbound link efforts. meaning the link the affiliate uses will technically be pointing to a different URL, and hence will pass PR value to a different URL. on a massive scale where you have say 500 affiliates and each one passes to their own customized URL, the value of the affiliate program from an SEO perspective would be virtually nullified.
Very accurately put... seems most programs have this problem... though there is one out there and I would have to go through the exhibitors list from AdTech to find which one that has a different way of doing it... capturing the referrer info from the cookie on the page.