Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Now my site is spanky clean and doing much better. One of the things I did was create a script to add the 'robots NOINDEX' meta tags for affiliate URLs.
Are these NOINDEXed links helping me in the goog algo? Most of these affiliate sites would be great to have incoming links from.
What would happen now if I removed the NOINDEX metatag? Does anyone have opinion on what I should do?
Don't remove the no index. You'd be risking creating a duplicate content problem, and that is worse than not having the benefit of those incoming links.
There are many other sites with affiliate programs that don't do this and have no problems. Are there other alternatives?
Instead of trying to pull the wool over your affiliates eyes and get a link for nothing, at their expense, why don't you....wait for it...work with them?
Karma Man!
What are you talking about? Did that make you feel important?
I work very hard on my site, and most of my affiliates work just as hard on theirs. Nobody is pulling the wool over anyone's eyes and I'm not forcing them to link to my site. We are all getting something out of the deal.
The reason I asked the question is because I don’t see other sites doing what I’ve been forced to do.
If you can’t offer any constructive advice, go dis someone on another forum.
You know that by converting the affiliate links to your site to ones that are counted by google will give you better positions and ultimately reduce the serp positions of your affiliates for the product/products you are selling.
>>Nobody is pulling the wool over anyone's eyes and I'm not forcing them to link to my site.
Affiliate selling is about sending you traffic, if they knew that your affiliate program was simply a shortcut to get you better postioning on Google, I doubt very much if many of them would actually use you.
>>We are all getting something out of the deal.
Yes but now your affiliates are getting considerably less, and not what was originally intended.
>>If you can’t offer any constructive advice
I am offering constructive advice. Instead of getting into this "I win, you lose" syndrome, why don't you look to building better win/win strategies - I'm pretty sure you were glad of your affiliate traffic, when you were penalised - and what I said about affiliates not using you is just as applicable to you competitors ;)
>>Karma,
What goes around, comes round. You already know what its like to be on the receiving end of scraper, and whether it was intended for the spiders to index your affiliate urls or not, you got bit with a dupe penalty.
>>Did that make you feel important?
No just sad.
Thank you. You stated your position well and I can agree with what you say this time; however, this still does not answer my question.
Most, if not all of my affiliates signed up before I had to implement the NOINDEX script. I don't see how it would be dishonest or underhanded to go back the way my site was intended.
Who knows, maybe I should leave it the way it is and advertise to my affiliates the benefit (to them) of the NOINDEX script (if there actually is one), but I'd really like to know the answer to my original question.
Jez jlander, I could answer your question but do you think I will.
1. A strong loyal base of affiliates will protect you from the ups and downs of google's serps.
2. How long do you think the above will remain undetected by google and you plummet because of it?
To reinforce the above here's a recent quote from Matt Cutts:
"Honest site owners often worry about duplicate content when they don't really have to," Google's Cutts said. "There are also people that are a little less conscientious."
Instead of thinking about how much can I squeeze out of my affiliates, think about how much can I give my affiliates.
Jez jlander, I could answer your question but do you think I will.
Do you just like to hear yourself talk? You made your opinion perfectly clear already. Your last message pretty much made up my mind to leave it be, but you are really starting to annoy me with your sarcasm.
I'm trying to learn in here and I have a pretty legitimate question since this seems to be a Google phenomenon. My site is doing very well in both MSN and Yahoo. I'm still trying to figure out Google. To everyone else, thanks...
