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However, this could entice affiliates to spam my site, compete with me on my keywords, register similar domain names, frame my site etc etc which will all damage SEO efforts.
So should I wait until my site is established before starting an affiliate program, or can it still work out favourably if I start one straight away?
Thanks in advance
1. affiliate network or an in-house option? I prefer network to protect you from IBL spam.
2. spell out your program rules to affiliates at signup and actually enforce them
ie. do not use your URLs as landing pages for purchased ads, do not bid on your branded keywords, no frames, etc.
3. manually approve affiliates and actually communicate with them
I was going to go for an in-house affiliate program, as some sites etc unfortunately encourage affiliate fraud, and poor affiliates.
You will probably have lots of affiliates sign up and do nothing at least for a while. Some may suddenly come to life while others won't ever do anything. Keep an open definition of "poor affiliates". Some affilaites don't make sites that look pretty but can drive a TON of sales.
You *could* set up a robots block, but if you are running it yourself, you may as well get the link juice. As long as you have a reasonably ranked site you shouldn't have a hijacking problem. If you are REALLY paranoid, you could always put something in our TOS about it and address it if it happens.
MadeWillis makes some good points, but I disagree with the adwords. I believe in letting affiliates have full reign UNLESS you have a monopoly and no other competitors, or in the case of your trademarks IF you are enforcing it against your competitors too. If you are lazy with your adsense, you may as well allow it, you can always change it later
how about if I set the affiliate page at
mysite.com/affiliate.htm?affid=xyz
and put a meta tag with no index, no follow on it for the affiliate.htm page?
will this stop affiliates outranking me in the search engines?
