Does Having Outbound Affiliate Links Affect SEO?

[Planet13]

Hi all,

What is the best way to handle outbound affiliate links from a site in order to avoid google punishment?

I assume they should be nofollowed.

Aside from that, do disclaimers need to be placed near the link (or in a header or footer area of content)?

Any other SEO-oriented advice on how to handle affiliate links is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[netmeg]

You want a disclaimer (or transparency statement, however you want to look at it) for FTC reasons, not for Google reasons.

Other than that, as long as you're nofollowed, you won't do worse than otherwise. If you want to do better than otherwise, you need to add significant value in order to differentiate yourself from everyone else who is also selling the product(s).

[Planet13]

Thanks netmeg!

So no need to "cloak" affiliate links or route them through a script that has been blocked by robots.txt or any of that stuff. Just nofollow them and put a disclaimer on the site.

Any suggestions on where / how many disclaimers I need to put on there?

Do I need a disclaimer on EVERY page that has an affiliate link?

Or a disclaimer in just the footer of the home page?

Or something else entirely?

[Robert Charlton]

Regarding the Google part of your question... I've heard Google say that they actually don't even care whether or not you're an affiliate.

Google's main concern, is visitor engagement and satisfaction with your content. I believe Google would even like to see visitors returning to your site over time. If your affiliate strategy is to interrupt your visitors and send them offsite as fast as you can, then you're going to have problems.

If your strategy is to, say, educate or inform your visitors, you can then send them off via a variety of affiliate links... perhaps even have these links function as mini supplier comparisons.

It is your unique content... whatever you add to what's effectively the Google visitor experience... that Google cares about. Google only wants to send visitors to sites that they (the visitors) are happy with.

[Planet13]

Thanks for the clarification.

Any suggestions on where to put the disclaimer?

[EditorialGuy]

It isn't a disclaimer, it's a disclosure statement:

A disclaimer would be a denial of responsibility, as in "We aren't responsible for orders placed through our affiliate, Merchant dot com." That's hardly the marketing message you want to send. :-)

A disclosure statement, on the other hand, simply makes it clear that you have some kind of relationship with the merchant. It can range from something as simple as a reference to an "affiliate partner" or "booking partner" to a full-blown statement that says you get a commission or referral fee from orders placed through your links to Merchant dot com.

On our editorial site, we have a full-blown disclosure statement in our "About Us" section, but for the most part, we keep things short and sweet--in part because our affiliate links take the reader to obvious third-party e-commerce sites.

IMHO, there's no single best way to handle disclosures for affiliate links, because different sites use affiliate links in different ways. An "affiliate marketer" may built a site entirely around affiliate links (in some cases, with a "white-label" implementation that makes it look as if the affiliate marketer is the merchant), while an editorial site may treat affiliate links as a form of advertising.

[Planet13]

Thanks for the input, EditorialGuy. Really appreciate the help.

[netmeg]

I usually put the disclosure with the privacy policy link, which means it's in the footer and shows up on every page. In additional I will usually label an aff link as (aff) next to the link, or one sentence at the end of a post.