I have some affiliate links on my page that look like this: www.affiliateprogram.com/the page/aid?=xxxxxx[cpa]1 do search engines penalize you for this? Do they penalize if you do cloak your link? If i should cloak, what is the best way to do so?
On my affiliate sites I do the following: a) Create a link www.mysite.com/go/affiliateproduct.html , and then redirect to the affiliate link by means of a .htaccess redirect b) Make the link nofollow, so that search engines don't follow it c) Disallow the /go directory for search engines. By making the link nofollow, you "wash your hands in innocence" as far as the search engines are concerned, because you do not "vouch" for the link. If your programming skills are not good or you have many affiliate links and don't want to change too much the .htaccess file, there are some free scripts that will store all links in a database and manage these redirects for you.
what are the free scripts. I know what you are talking about but pretty sure i would screw it up.....
Search for those, you'll find plenty of them that store the links in a database. As a simple alternative, create a text file with the following text: <?php header( 'Location: www.affiliateprogram.com/the page/aid?=xxxxxx[cpa]1' ) ; ?> Code (markup): Then save this file as affiliateproduct.php in the /go directory and use a link such as www.mysite.com/go/affiliateproduct.php. This will redirect the "page" to your affiliate page. Make sure that the text indicated above is the only text in the file or it will not work! Also remember the other two steps, those are *very* important!