affiliate review site

[tigger]

I'm just starting to work on a review site, all the content will be my own and to buy I can deep link into the affiliate

My question

would it be better to keep affiliate links leaving the page to a minimum? if I was to do link all the products I would have maybe 15 links per page, the advantage in doing this hopefully will be better conversions and the surfer will be taken straight to the buy page

or

just have one link leaving to lets say the "blue widgets" section then surfers would need to further search for the product? this would lead I think to lower conversions

or is their mix I've not considered?

[tigger]

anyone got any views on this?

[Marcia]

If what you're talking about is an affiliate site with a product review model, that's probably different from a regular affiliate product site (which are sometimes good one way, sometimes another way).

For reviews, I'd imagine if you're reviewing something like 15 comparable products (or merchants/stores) on one page, you'd either want to link to all of them - or maybe just the top 3 (or top 5/6) of your recommended best choices, if you've pitched them well.

Is it a review or a straight product site? Hand rolled or with a script?

(I can only guess as a consumer, I'm not really familiar with doing review sites.)

[tigger]

Hi M thanks for replying

the site will be html & no script and lets say for example its reviewing books and I would be placing a affiliate link to each book within the page (max 15/20) - my worry would be if the Se's would see all these links leaving a page and harm its chances of rankling? the content would be 100% original - I would also need to link to every book so just going to the top 5 isn't really an option

ta

[Beagle]

The way you describe the site in your latest post is in line with the general wisdom (and with my own experience) on the way to get the highest conversions for a content site, and I'd think that with your own original content a review site would fit the definition. Direct product linking is very important. One thing you might want to think about is whether 15-20 products on a page would be too many for a shopper to compare at once.

There are various methods people use to "hide" affiliate links from the search engines, but some are now banned by SE's, and some are against the rules of various affiliate programs. If you're mixing several affiliate programs on a page, it gets even trickier to follow each program's TOS for its own products and still give each product equal treatment. (I'm thinking of things like "no follow" tags, java script, etc.) Not saying it can't be done, but it takes some care. I'm sure there are threads here about the topic that can tell you more than I can.

Since you're just launching the site, it might be hard to know what percentage of your traffic to expect to come through search engines, but it depends a lot on your niche (if it's a general site, I have no idea). My one similar site is in a "tightly-knit" niche where people tend to find sites through personal referral, word of mouth, niche directories, mentions in forum posts, etc., more than they do through search engines, so I focus on the conversion end of things and don't worry too much about how the SE's will see my affiliate links. If you're in a more SE-dependent area, you may come to a different conclusion.

[tigger]

Hi Beagle

Thanks for your input

This is my second site within this market having got the first one pulled due to over optimisation (I think) so this time round its a complete opposite which is not the easiest things to due the site content - I did consider tweaking the first site but its pulling 1200 uniques a day from MSN so don't really want to loose that

I've looked at blocking the affiliate links (using htaccess) but I believe G is only really looking for thin pages/sites and so long as the content is in place hopefully as MC has said affiliates sites are not the problem its lack of content that is(I hope)

breaking the pages down into further pages is not really a route I want to try as otherwise I think its just all going to go supp and as it is by the time all the products are on the site it will be 100 plus pages big and getting quality deep links alone for that will be hard enough

The plan is to get the main site built then add new pages at the rate of one a day until its complete so hopefully the SE will assume its being updated often so crawl it often

[skibum]

I'd go for the product specific deep links. I don't think Google cares about the presence or number of affiliate links so long as the content is there and there are some decent incoming links.

It can be a real PITA to get down the the product level, to setup ad campaigns that really speak the the person searching and give the end user exactly what they are looking for but to set them up any other way is to set them up for failure IMHO and burn a lot more time down the road.

[tigger]

thanks skibum

the product deep links is the route I wanted to go down, it's just after having the last site booted I wanted to make sure the next one wouldn't pick up any other type of penalty - mind you on a plus note it just goes to show that a site with nothing but MSN traffic can survive

looks like I've got some work in front of me :o)

[davewray]

It really comes down to personal preference. The less "looking" around a customer has to do, the better your conversion rates will be (perhaps at the expense of some organic traffic?). Google seems to like "comparison" sites right now, so if it were me I'd have a "comparison" table of sorts. With unique, good content you are sure to get good organic traffic over time. If you have enough "subsets" in your niche to expand to, you'll have no problem building a huge content rich website. Another benefit of having the comparison table is that it's easier for the potential customer to compare prices and do "bargain shopping" on that page as opposed to having to go to different pages to compare. They are less likely to hit their back button and click on another SERP...