Search engine optimization (SEO) is a key success factor for many websites. The logic is implacable: the more visitors a site has, the more revenue it can generate (whether through affiliation or traditional advertising). With this in mind, you need to pay close attention to the many and varied updates to search engine algorithms, have a clear SEO strategy and a good knowledge of your environment. Affiliation is compatible with good natural search engine optimization, provided you follow a few simple rules.
Which attribute for your affiliate links & your Google ranking?
To benefit from good natural referencing, and taking into account Google’s weight in online searches (over 90% of searches in France), you need to pay particular attention to the way Google interprets the outgoing links you distribute on your site. You can add attributes to your links to inform Google of your relationship with the website you’re linking to. There are a number of attributes you can use, such as rel=sponsored: this is useful for marking links as advertisements or paid placements (for example, for your affiliate links, or if a brand pays you to link to them from one of your articles). Historically, Google recommended using the rel=nofollow attribute. The rel=sponsored attribute is somewhat new (announced in September 2019) and there’s no penalty for continuing to use nofollow (if, for example, you don’t want to go and update all the links on your website). John Mueller, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, says that if you can, it’s best to use the rel=sponsored attribute on your affiliate links. In a nutshell: Google recommends using rel=”sponsored” for affiliate links. Example with an Effiliation tracking link:
<a href="https://track.effiliation.com/servlet/effi.redir?id_compteur=22531411&url=https://www.boulanger.com" rel="sponsored">visitez Boulanger !</a>
You don’t need to use a rel=”sponsored” attribute on your internal links, even if these internal links lead to sponsored content with affiliate links.
Is distributing lots of affiliate links bad for your SEO?
According to Google, many affiliate links are accepted if the main content adds value to the web. When affiliate links are used correctly, there’s no limit to the number of links a page can have as far as SEO is concerned: there’s no risk of a penalty as long as you use rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”. Here’s an interesting exchange translated from John Mueller: “It’s more a question of, well, you need to have useful content on your page
. Donc c’est un peu l’angle que nous prenons ici.
The number of affiliate links you have on a site is completely irrelevant. The ratio between the number of links and the length of the article is also irrelevant. Essentially, what we need to find is a reason to display your site in the search results of users who are looking for something.. And that reason is usually not the affiliate link, but the actual content you provide on those pages.””
If you only display Amazon affiliate links on your site, this will be of interest to you: linking to several merchants is good for your SEO.
Following the December 2021 update, Google has completed its ” Write high-quality product reviews” section:
- Remember to include links to various vendors, so that potential customers can make their purchases from the merchant of their choice.
We’re delighted with this update, which goes hand in hand with our partners Winamaz and Affimax: affiliation solutions that display several merchants with corresponding prices for a given product. If you only relay Amazon as an affiliate, it’s high time you upgraded and joined us, so as not to penalize your referencing!
