Affiliate link promotion - impossible?

Will affiliate link promotion boost or harm my e-shop?

[Grzegorz]

Hi!

I've got an e-shop. Now I'm going to start affiliate program which should promote my site. When I started my e-shop I have told myself - "I won't use black SEO techniques to be #1". So I thought to start affiliate program - that people could install on their sites link to my e-shop. They can earn and I can promote.

I think this is very good. My site will get more popular so people will connect to my affiliate program more and more. My e-shop will increase link popularity so it will be in top 10 for search queries. Beautiful isn't it? And no cheating!

But wait? I read this at Matt Cutts Blog (oneof Googlers) about WebmasterWorld Las Vegas Organic Site Reviews Panel, (regarding paid backlinks)

(Seobook mentioned it)

What is interesting is this:
"<snip> seems penalized in Google since October 2004
*Matt Cutts said "tell me about your backlinks" ... uber spammy reciprocal linking campaign. said good news is no manual spam penalty, but few of the low quality links this site has are doing it any good."

Few of the low quality links? How t'hell am I suppose to now is someone's site a low quality to particular search engine or not?
Even if I will moderate registration of my affiliates I don't kow which of their sites are low quality.

So does it mean that nowdays is better not to have any links at all? I can't afford my site being banned from Google.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:01 pm (utc) on Dec. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed blog URLs. Removed website specifics. [/edit]

[martinibuster]

Affiliate links are not backlinks, so don't worry about it, they won't help your rankings, and neither will they hurt.

[edited by: martinibuster at 11:15 pm (utc) on Dec. 25, 2005]

[Grzegorz]

"Affiliate links are not backlinks, so don't worry about it, they won't help your rankings, and neither will they help."

Yes, but it is going to be my affiliate program. My idea is to make it work with backlinks. What do you think?

[martinibuster]

You said:
My idea is to make it work with backlinks.

I said:
Affiliate links are not backlinks... they won't help your rankings.

Isn't that the answer to your question? Or am I misunderstanding your statement?

[tqatsju]

he means is there anyway to have affiliate links be real back links rather then [dummy.com?ad=AFFILIATEID...] etc....is there a way for affiliates just to link to www.dummy.com, i think anyway, i thought about this myself, i guess if you made affiliate links cookie based only then you may be able to do something like this and then the affiliate links would help wouldn't they? At least in some circumstances?

[blue_eagle]

Yes you can do it but your affiliates will never get paid with plain links :)

[stuntdubl]

Good affiliates tend to not like programs designed to promote link popularity mainly because it confuses an already cloudy issue.

Seasoned affiliates will be very skeptical of a program designed to take advantage of their sites for link pop. It can be done, but it's best to keep your affiliate marketing and your SEO seperate until you've become REAL good at both imho.