What to do with affililate links?

How to make the most of affiliates

[ffadmin]

Affiliates link to our site via URLs such as http://mydomain.com/affiliate/12345. There are thousands of such incoming links. What is the best thing to do when Google follows one of these? Do nothing? Add a NOINDEX,FOLLOW to avoid duplicate content? Do a "Location" redirect to the front door? Other ideas?

[Brett_Tabke]

location redirect to the front door with the phrase "session expired" in the title.

[CCowboy]

Brett_Tabke

Will that pass page rank?

[woop01]

If you want page rank from your affiliates, pay them for page rank or give them reciprocal links. If you are just paying them a commission on sales, it is unethical to 'trick' them into sending you page rank for nothing in return.

[Smiley]

> How to make the most of affiliates

Work with them to drive more sales for you. Don't worry so much about what you might be getting free from them.

[CCowboy]

Whats wrong with paying them money for sales and getting page rank?

[woop01]

If you aren't paying them for the link or at least returning the link, you are getting something for nothing from your affiliates in the form of page rank. In fact you are actually hurting your affiliates by moving further up the SERPS making it harder for them to rank high and actually earn a commission off of a referal.

[globay]

woop01:

I was thinking about offering an affiliate onlineshop, where I would provide hosting, bandwith, and the online shop, and my partners would get the full comission, including the money for adsense.

I don't think it is unethical to get PageRank in return. In fact it was the only profit, I would have on my site. So far, I have not come up with a reliable way to track their visitors to serve them my partners online shop, but serve my site when google crawls the page.

So if anybody could provide me with hints, I would be very glad.

[Smiley]

> where I would provide hosting, bandwith, and the online shop...

I'd be careful, especially if the hosting is shared, could look a bit suspect to the se's.

> Whats wrong with paying them money for sales and getting page rank?

I don't have a problem with it - but the good affiliates know *exactly* what you are doing. I always think it's best to be upfront, if you're some getting quality page rank from them I'd offer to pay. Happy affiliates mean a good bottom line for you.

[globay]

>> where I would provide hosting, bandwith, and the online shop...
>I'd be careful, especially if the hosting is shared, could look a bit suspect to the se's.

Well, it works like this: they link to: [mysite.tld...] PHP sees the referrer, and replaces my affiliate ID with theirs. I get the pagerank, they get money. Unfortunately, this does not work with everybody, because some have referrer switched off. Also,if the site is bookmarked, people get my affiliate id.

Thats why I am looking for a better way.

[woop01]

If you are buying page rank from them, pay them for page rank.

If you are buying sales from them, pay them for sales.