Hi there This is not much more than anecdotal evidence but i thought some might find it interesting... I have done some playing around with trying to optimise 2 websites in the dvd area. One is a price comparison site which uses a lot of affiliated links, the other is a DVD shop with no affiliate links. I would say that I put a lot more time and effort into optimising the price comparison site than the other one and over a longer period of time. Also, according to my limited knowledge the price comparison site is built in a much more "SEO friendly" manner. However the DVD shop is killing it in the SERPS. It has top 10 rankings for some very competitive terms whilst the comparison site limps into the top 50 in yahoo and the top 200 in google. My conclusion is that it must be the affiliate links that are getting the site penalised. Any thoughts??
Without the URLs so we can do link analysis etc. it's way too anecdotal indeed. If all the aff site's content is not unique, then that's more likely the cause. Google doesn't like aff sites that don't add significant value (content).
cheers guys- I guess you have confirmed what i thought. Suppose I need to get some unique content. I have thought about putting a relevant RSS feed on the site- would that help do you think? or is that not "unique" enough?
It's funny that people are quick to jump on the "affl. links are bad" band wagon. Just go Google a few KW's... most of the top sites have at least one affl. link somewhere on the page. BTW... if you are worried you can always get naked links.
thats looks like a very clever innovation. havent seen it working on uk affiliate networks but hope it gets taken up.