Affiliate Links Are Worth The Effort
It seems that affiliate links are not considered ‘paid’ links by any of the search engines, at least, not yet. We know they change their minds frequently. In fact, judging by the number of blogs writing about the topic, don’t be surprised if there is surge in affiliate links and a sudden Google mind swap.
This last year has seen a lot of businesses, in particular affiliate management companies, paying bloggers to write small posts but incorporating affiliate links rather than normal links. Is this an attempt to sidestep the pay-per-post penalties that Google imposes? Most likely. It serves two purposes, free links and marketing. As the search engineers from the major search engines noted at SMX East:
if affiliate links came from valuable, relevant, trust-worthy sources - bloggers endorsing a product, affiliates of high quality, etc. - they would be counted in link algorithms
At present, affiliate links do carry weight so if you’re selling products or services, it may be well worth the effort of developing an affiliate program as part of your marketing package.
Whether or not it increases your sales is not the issue. If it counts as an inbound link then you will be increasing your links very quickly to targeted pages such as your landing page. You may as well make use of it while you can.
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