Hey.. I'm working on a new website and i'm wondering about my out going affiliate links. What do you guys have to say about the following options: 1. put a "no follow" attribute. 2. I have seen a lot of affiliate sites sends the users to a URL on the site and than the URL does an auto redirect. Example: put in the src="mysite.com/links.php?id=32" and this page will open the affiliate site. 3. Position the links inside a DIV that loads the data with JavaScript. The search engines doesn't crawl this kind of links - is it a good idea to do that? Hope some affiliates here has more information regarding this issue. Thanks.
Here are your options to redirect your affiliate links. Java Code Redirect merchant-url-goes-here.com"; return true' onMouseOut='window.status="Done"; return true' href="http://www.affiliate-url-goes-here.com" target="_blank">TEXT GOES HERE</a> This link will display the http://www.merchant-url-goes-here.com in the status bar at the bottom of your browser, hiding the http://www.affiliate-url-goes-here.com. PHP Redirect <?php header( 'Location: http://www.yoursite.com/new_page.html' ) ; ?> HTML Redirect <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Taking you to johnchow.com website</TITLE> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://johnchow.com?ref=justin"> </HEAD> <BODY>Please stand by.</BODY> </HTML> I forgot the source of this tutorial. I saved it early this year.
if you're talking about redirecting so your user doesn't think they are affiliate links then i like to use the php method above. if your talking hiding your outbound links from search engines, there is relly no point. Google sees your link, they just don't follow it. Also google has nothing against you having affiliate links (they have a program adwords set up to promote this), they just care about the content you provide your reader.
I usually set up a redirect page that is blocked by robots.txt and put "nofollow" in the links to play it safe.