I Lied
The Lie
In my last blog post I stated that my next step would be to complete the menus on my website before moving on to Course 3. Well, after posting my website on 'Site Comments' and 'Site Feedback' I learned that Google may not like seeing affiliate links in my blog posts. I only have 2 blog posts and I only had one affiliate link, but I got the warning that I should put affiliate links in reviews only.
Affiliate Review Pages
I had to move on to the next course so I could learn about this...making me a liar. I had to learn more, thus my menus are still not completed. However, I became a bit confused...again. Soooo, do we create internal links from blog posts to review pages? Do we place all affiliate links in review pages and make sure those pages are not indexed and not followed by Google? Course 3 did mention that it's not good to have too many affiliate links in blog posts, but it wasn't clear about the whole 'review page' and how that can be helpful in Googles googly eyes.
What's the Best Affiliate Link Method?
I then asked the person who referred me to WA and he said that there's no real proof that Google doesn't like affiliate links in posts/pages. Just don't overdo it.
I also found this blog post: http://growtraffic.com/blog/2015/01/affiliate-links-bad-seo which explains that only the abuse of affiliate links is a problem.
I'd like to know how others here at WA are going about affiliate links. I especially would like to know if you are using review pages that you do not index. I'm only assuming a NOINDEX might be how people are accomplishing this, I really have no idea how it's done.
So, I'm on Course 4 now and I don't think I'm going to stop any time soon. It's so addictive to keep learning!
Recent Comments
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Well, we learned here at WA that it's not recommended to have affiliate links scattered all over the website. It's better to have one page (review page like you said) and internally link to it from other pages and posts.
thanks for the interesting share. It would be good to have a definitive answer of that important question.
One thing you did not lie about. You are a good writer and know how to put a goof headline out there!
I make all of my affiliate links NOFOLLOW links and have operated that way for years, so I don't really know how it impacts page rank in the current environment. Don't make your pages NOINDEX or you will never rank your content (make your links NOFOLLOW instead).
I agree that the learning is addictive! I don't have a concrete answer to your question, as I'm new here too. For my website I just made sure that affiliate links are only in a couple of my posts and I have lots of other quality content with no affiliate links. Maybe later on I'll "no index" the sites with affiliate links.
If you'd like to check it out my site is: http://fitnfreshdaily.com
I'd love to see yours too.
-j
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I tend to put a banner at the bottom of a page and put links in images.