Hey, do you use your blog to promote affiliate products?
Then, you should read this article, and follow this rule for your affiliate links. Otherwise, there's a chance that you will get a penalty in near future.
There are many ways to monetize a blog or website. But, one of the favorite methods of Bloggers is to promote a product and earn commission from the sales.
This may sound a bit difficult for beginners, but as you grow your blog, you will understand that affiliate marketing is a great way to earn some good revenue.
And, one of the best ways to do affiliate marketing is to use affiliate links in the blog posts.
But, if you add affiliate links in the wrong way, which violates Google's quality guidelines then your blog can lose its ranking in Search Engine Results.
In this blog post, I will guide you about the best practices for using affiliate links.
So, let's get started.
What are Affiliate Links
Affiliate links are related to affiliate marketing.
And, what is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is a way to earn revenue or commission by promoting a company's products and services.
Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing program, so you get paid every time your marketing drives a sale.
And, one of the most effective ways to promote online is by writing a blog about the products. You can either write a review about the product or service you are promoting, or add the product links in related topics.
Either way, you have to add links to the products, these links are called affiliate links. Every time someone goes through that link, and purchases the product, you will get a commission.
How Google Treats Affiliate Links
Google knows about Affiliate Links and Affiliate Marketing and accepts monetizing a website with Affiliate Links.
But, to lessen the impact of link spam, Google asks site owners to define the relationship with the linked page. To do that, you have to add the rel attribute in the outgoing links from your website.
This way, crawlers can understand which external links are valuable for users. Adding rel attribute is a way to qualify the affiliate links.
And Google clearly mentioned that by failing to qualify affiliate links appropriately, sites may get penalties. They also mentioned, that manual actions may be taken or the system might take algorithmic actions.
So, it is better to follow the best practices for links.
How to Qualify Affiliate Links
To qualify the affiliate links, all you need to do is to add rel=" sponsored " in the links. This is will indicate the link type to Google, and will not affect your website's overall ranking.
Many people previously used, nofollow rel value for their affiliate links, which is good. But, now sponsored rel value is recommended.
You don't need to change your previous nofollow links, but it is better to use rel=" sponsored " from now.
Here's a detailed guide on how to use rel values on links:
- rel="sponsored": For affiliate links, advertisements, and paid placements.
- rel="nofollow": For external links, when you don't want Google to crawl the linked page from your site.
- rel="ugc": For user-generated content like comments, and forum posts.
FAQs
Will adding rel="nofollow" to these links help my website ranking?
No, it won't help your ranking in Google directly. But, you will not get any algorithmic or manual actions against your website. So, if your content is great it will do better in the long run.
And, also adding nofollow links will save your website's crawl budget and will not pass any unnecessary page rank to other websites.
Do I need to change old affiliate links on my website?
If your old affiliate links already have a nofollow tag, then you don't need to worry. But, if you haven't added the nofollow attribute in your previous links, then you should change them.
Do I need to add both nofollow and sponsored attributes for affiliate links?
No, only one of them is enough. And, it's better to use rel="sponsored" from now.
Do I need to add rel="sponsored" in paid posts?
Yes, otherwise there's a possibility that Google may take manual actions against your site (when you have many paid posts).