My affiliate program and Google

[swamyg1]

I am the owner of an ecommerce site, we're thinking of launching an affiliate program that promotes products for sale on our site. I've read a number of threads about external sites adding the "nofollow" attribute, so page rank does not get passed to the merchant. We are just looking to diversify our network through our affiliate program.

My question is, as the merchant, do I need to worry about giving out links to members who join my affiliate program? It's up to them what they do with the links, however they use the links does not impact me?

I am a little concerned about our links showing up on spam-like sites, those sites could greatly impact our ranking with the way Panda sees those links, correct? We do approve our members but we don't want to have to continually monitor all of the affiliates.

We don't want to do anything that will impact our serps because we are ranking very well.

Can somebody please give me some insight on this?

[Sand]

If you're going to run an affiliate program, you really need to audit your affiliates regularly. I know it's a pain (I've done it), but it's important. Not just for Google, but for preventing fraud. If you haven't run a program before, you have no idea how many shady things people will try to get away with. Just believe me when I say you need to audit religiously.

With that said, I haven't seen an example of a site being hurt by running an affiliate program. Especially if you're using a platform like CJ or Impact Radius -- those links go through so many redirect hops that the links are next to worthless by the time they hit your site. And Google will be pretty good at recognizing what they are and discounting them.

If you're using an internal tracking system, just be careful with how you handle the URLs. Often times, people use a query string variable like aff=affiliateID to track referrals. This is fine, but you need to either redirect it or canonical it to the root page or you could run into some duplicate content issues that could potentially cause you some Panda grief.

[netmeg]

#1 - Get an EXPERIENCED affiliate manager. It will cost, but it will save a ton of headaches down the road.

[not2easy]

netmeg is right.

There are not many things worse you can do for your bottom line than to run an affiliate program on auto-pilot. Properly managed, an affiliate program can do great things for your business. Unmanaged, it is like leaving your keys in the lock when you close up shop for the day.

If your program platform is in-house you should pay a professional "Outsourced Program Manager" to help you get it set up right, and to train an in-house employee to take over at some point. If it is with a network you will need to do the same thing. Networks do not manage your program for you, they only track sales and commissions. Program management is not a job for amateurs.

[claaarky]

I don't think you need to worry about the affiliate links, in fact in my experience if they send decent numbers of visitors they CAN have a positive impact on your organic rankings.

However, if you provide a data feed then your affiliates can reproduce your content and this is where you need to be careful. Firstly, good content affiliates might use your content and end up outranking you, which could cost you organic traffic (although it would be replaced by affiliate traffic) meaning you'll be paying affiliate commission for traffic you once got for free.

Secondly, people don't like seeing the same content over and over again. If lots of content affiliates reproduce your content and rank well for it, this could have a negative impact on how people perceive your site, and that can negatively impact your rankings also. Saying that, the additional promotion of your brand is a very good thing for your rankings.

It's a complicated equation. We definitely pay for sales we once got for free, affiliates can be all over your brand name trying to cut cookies from visitors who already know about your site. PPC affiliates can position their ads to get above you and drop a cookie. Affiliates want to make money and they won't necessarily do it in a way that helps you.

Use affiliates shrewdly and you can do well though. There is a well known online fashion retailer in the uk who used affiliates very effectively to build their brand, then killed their affiliate program and have gone from strength to strength now that they are a household name.

It's a minefield basically. Get lots of professional advice before launching an affiliate program. It could be the best or worse thing you ever do.

[not2easy]

My question is, as the merchant, do I need to worry about giving out links to members who join my affiliate program? It's up to them what they do with the links, however they use the links does not impact me?

You must create an agreement and monitor the traffic, where it is coming from. Especially if you offer a product that might be reviewed. The FTC has ruled that Merchants are responsible for fraudulent claims made in affiliate reviews and at least one successful merchant was fined millions of dollars when complaints were filed with the FTC. If you spend a little time at the FTC site you should be able to get the information that you would need to understand the liability issue.

It is expected that merchants have an affiliate agreement in place and that part of the sign-up process is agreeing to abide by your terms.