I'm looking for an affiliate marketing program for my client. We are interested in a program that will prove seo-friendly links back to my clients site from his affiliates. I've read much on the subject but finding a company such as LinkShare who does this has proven more difficult. Can anyone provide some names of companies who use direct links to the merchant with affiliate links?
I don't know about such affiliate programs. The one I use does not support SEO friendly links and I built a simple script to work around it (it can work with any program). If you are interested, it is here: http://www.seoguide.org/seo301-affiliate-program-seo-tips.htm
http://www.quick-drug-store.com/affiliates.php If the option is "Open my own Pharmacy" your comission is 60%. Best Regards
I believe that IDevAffiliate, which I use for my program, will create affiliate links that go directly to your domain name IF you install the script on your server. Since the link will be to your domain name, it will count as a regular IBL. (I have IDevAffiliate hosted by them on their servers, so I don't get this benefit.) Follow the link in my sig to see more about this solution.
I'm a bit new to all this. Could someone explain in small words what an SEA "friendly" affiliate link would be? Do the search engines not like affiliate links? Would redirecting (on the server side) to the affiliate site take care of the problem? Just wondering, since I do have affiliate links on a site I'm trying to ramp up. Thanks, Gary
The search engines don't count affiliate links from networks as they are just redirects through a server. Google for example can go through the links and does even list some affiliate links. I don't think it'll be long until they are counted. A friendly link would go to something like www.yoursites.com/affid=123 which is part of your own site. However this will only help that landing page and then dilute throughout your site. An affiliate programme is for driving transactions, so concentrate on this. If your having problems with your engine listings then pay your affiliates well and they'll get their sites onto the relevant terms.
Let me make sure I understand this. Say I had my own affiliate program through ClickBank, for example. I have a whole bunch of affiliates signed up, who are all linking to affid.foo.clickbank.com (or whatever it is). This link redirects to my site, but since it's a redirect through the clickbank server, it doesn't count as a link for me. Is that all? So this thread is about finding an affiliate service that will allow links to your own site rather than the main affiliate site, thus generating real inbound links that search spiders can find. Is that about right? Appreciate the help. As I say I'm new at this. Gary
Yep Gary, you got it. There are a couple programs that let you add direct links for PR. myaffiliateprogram, affiliateclicks and ultralinks by fusionquest.com. The last one is the least expensive. Hope this helps and best of luck!
I think some of the posters thought you were looking for s/w that supports direct inbound links, but most in-house scripts do that. To answer the original question about "seo friendly" I assume you are referring to affiliate software that provides a "link without the question mark" feature, right? It's rumoured that search engines discount the value of links with ? in them. There are a few affiliate software products that do that. Search for "No question mark links" in our database listed below. Most of the other products mentioned above are also in the database so you can compare them too. Cheers, Peter
Well, we are going to try Myaffiliateprogram and see where it takes us. I'll report back in a few months and let everyone know how it is going. Thanks for the feedback, it was helpful.