The answer to the question, can affiliates affect your SEO ranking is a plain ‘yes’. The effects however, can either be positive or negative. Search engines consider many factors when considering a site’s ranking. Among the important factors checked is the quantity and quality of links leading to your site. If you have an affiliate program, you would probably have a lot of links pointing to your site.
Affiliate links can point to your site in either of two ways. The affiliate links might point first to the administrator’s server before being redirected to your site. The second way an affiliate link can point to your site is directly. This means that your affiliate sites just place a link that leads directly to your site.
Usually the more links you get, the higher your site ranking with search engine. The more affiliates you thus have would mean more links and better ranking.
However, with search engines such as Google, the number of links is also weighed against the quality of the links. With site like these, where the popularity of the link is considered in the ranking algorithms numerous affiliates links would not affect your site rankings, at least not positively.
Google checks and measures how quickly new links to your site appears. When countless of new links suddenly appear within a short time, it is considered as search engine spam. This could make Google penalize the site or ban it outright. Also considered is how many of these new links contain same anchor text links. Affiliates with same identical anchor texts are also viewed as search engine spam and could also attract sanctions. So the question can affiliate affect your SEO ranking has been answered. Yes, it can increase your site ranking if used properly.
Here are some tips:
- Be careful when creating backup links on affiliates sites.
- Concentrate on quality links than just quantity.
- Each links should be made a bit different and unique.
- Do not spam or post numerous links all at the same time or within too short a time period.
Any more tips you want to share? Post it here. Until next time, happy freeSEOing!