Affiliate Site with Unique Content - How to play it safe?
-
Hi There,
I'm a consultant and am used to working for brands that have their own product. Currently I am advising a hotel site that is an affiliate of another branded site. They do rather well at what they do but I am looking for some advise.
I am aware that google tends not to "like" affiliates, I assume this is because the product is not theirs or that they have thin content.
With this affiliate they have not used any XML information, they have built all their own pages, taken non of the content from the master site, but eventually, in the buying process the customer has to go off to a white label version of the master company site.
Even though all the landing pages have unique content and are currently doing well in the SERPS im concerned that with a Google update sometime in the future, perhaps there will be a penalty. We've done all we can content wise (videos, unique photos, unique words, social etc).
q1 - is there any way to link the two sites, the white label and the main content site so google doesn't see it as leaving one site for another?
q2 - how is this situation best handled?
-
Hi kane
Thanks a lot for your response
In the long run, it may not be the only way to make money, but in order to contract the product, I gotta get the hits running through the site... bit of a viscious circle. I was a bit worried the rank will fall but I think you're right, with an affiliate site theres only so much you can do, as long as you follow best practice.
Ive been worried about it also for bounce rate stats but having watched rands whiteboard friday, seems its not something I need to worry about YET...
Thanks Kane
-
Sounds like they're doing about as well as any affiliate business model can do in regards to creating valuable content and value for site visitors.
I wouldn't worry about linking to the other site - if that's the only way to make money than there's not much choice in the matter.
Google isn't going to "see it as leaving one site for another" - if anything it's a good thing that site visitors went to that site, and found a link that led to whatever they were looking for. Google can't draw any conclusions beyond that.
If you're worried about passing link value, find a way to 302 redirect the link.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
No Java, No Content..?
Hello Mozers! 🙂 I have a question for you: I am working on a site and while doing an audit I disabled JavaScript via the Web Developer plugin for Chrome. The result is that instead of seeing the page content, I see the typical “loading circle” but nothing else. I imagine this not a good thing but what does this implies technically from crawler perspective? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Pipistrella0 -
Duplicate Content Question (E-Commerce Site)
Hi All, I have a page that ranks well for the keyword “refurbished Xbox 360”. The ranking page is an eCommerce product details page for a particular XBOX 360 system that we do not currently have in stock (currently, we do not remove a product details page from the website, even if it sells out – as we bring similar items into inventory, e.g. more XBOX 360s, new additional pages are created for them). Long story short, given this way of doing things, we have now accumulated 79 “refurbished XBOX 360” product details pages across the website that currently, or at some point in time, reflected some version of a refurbished XBOX 360 in our inventory. From an SEO standpoint, it’s clear that we have a serious duplicate content problem with all of these nearly identical XBOX 360 product pages. Management is beginning to question why our latest, in-stock, XBOX 360 product pages aren't ranking and why this stale, out-of-stock, XBOX 360 product page still is. We are in obvious need of a better process for retiring old, irrelevant (product) content and eliminating duplicate content, but the question remains, how exactly is Google choosing to rank this one versus the others since they are primarily duplicate pages? Has Google simply determined this one to be the original? What would be the best practice approach to solving a problem like this from an SEO standpoint – 301 redirect all out of stock pages to in stock pages, remove the irrelevant page? Any thoughts or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Justin
Technical SEO | | JustinGeeks0 -
Is this considered Duplicate Content?
Good Morning, Just wondering if these pages are considered duplicate content? http://goo.gl/t9lkm http://goo.gl/mtfbf Can you please take a look and advise if it is considered duplicate and if so, what should i do to fix... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Site maps, Is there any benefit?
I have a relatively simple and small site (60 pages). All of it is crawlable and there is nothing I want non follow. So, is there any real benefit to a sitemap since Google can get to all the site anyway? Do they give the site more credence or something because it's there? I guess as an aside, are there any favorite sites that will generate a site map? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Google Panda and ticketing sites: quality of content
Hi from Madrid! I am managing the Marketing Department of a ticketing site in Europe similar to Stubhub.com. We have thousands of events and, until now, we used templates for their descriptions. A lot of events share the same description with minor changes. They also have a lot of tickets on sale, so that's unique content different on each event. Now the last Google Panda update hit Europe and I was wondering if that will affect us a lot. It's hard to tell for now, because we are in the middle of the summer and the volume of searches in our industry depends decreases a lot during this time of the year. I know that ideally we should have unique descriptions but that would need a lot of resources and they are not important for our users: they just want to know the venue, the time and the price of the tickets! Have you experienced something about Google Panda update with a similar site or with another e-commerce industry? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Does 301 redirecting a site multiple times keep the value of the original site?
Hi, All! If I 301 redirect site www.abc.com to www.def.com, it should pass (almost) all linkjuice, rank, trust, etc. What happens if I then redirect site www.def.com to www.ghi.com? Does the value of the original site pass indefinitely as long as you do the redirects correctly? Or does it start to be devalued at some point? If anyone's had experience redirecting a site more than once and they've seen reportable good/bad/neutral results, that would be very helpful. Thanks in advance! -Aviva B
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0 -
Canonical pagination content
Hello We have a large ecommerce site, as you are aware that ecommerce sites has canonical issues, I have read various sources on how best to practice canonical on ecommerce site but I am not sure yet.. My concert is pagination where I am on category product listing page.. the pagination will have all different product not same however the meta data will be same so should I make let's say page 2 or 3 to main category page or keep them as is to index those pages? Another issue is using filters, where I am on any page and I filter by price or manufacturer basically the page will be same so here It seems issue of duplicate content, so should I canonical to category page only for those result types? So basically If I let google crawl my pagination content and I only canonical those coming with filter search result that would be best practice? and would google webmaster parameter handling case would be helpful in this scenario ? Please feel free to ask in case you have any queries regards
Technical SEO | | CNMOnline28
Carl0