Affiliates with very few visitors will never bother about the quality of links. But high traffic website owners may never agree to put a bad quality link even if you offer him 100% commission. It is wise decison to consider following points before choosing your affiliate software.
Do the link sensitive affiliates find links that will minimize the risk of losing their link credibility to google?
Normally owners of a professional websites are very much link-conscious. They never put any link at any of their web page if it goes against normal SEO rule. There is valid reason for this, if they do it there is chance that they may be penalized by google. I do not think any affiliate should take risk to upset google.
What google (or other search engines) likes is natural link i.e. direct link to a page with relevant content. It mainly dislikes paid links or irrelevant links. If the links is redirected via another webpage it may consider the link as paid link. If the redirect is via another website the situation become worst.
But unfortunately all standard affiliate links are redirects by nature until special care is taken by the software makers. And unfortunately all prospective mega affiliates will be choosy about the links because they will not agree to lose the link credibility what they have earned over years.
If your affiliate software vendor can help you giving any deep linking facilities direct to the content pages then you can really have something to woo them.
Do the brand sensitive affiliates can choose a link that can hide his affiliations with your site to his own visitors?
Websites with high traffic are normally brand sensitive to their readers. They may want to hide the fact that they are affiliates of a relatively less popular websites. However they may not mind to put a natural link that can hide this fact. Some times they may even disagree to refer any visitor from their website.
But you must need these websites to become your affiliate because they have traffic. One single affiliate can sell of 100 normal affiliates. But your quality of link or promo may be the biggest obstacle. Please with your affiliate software vendor if they have any solution for this or not. Think twice before buying if they don’t have it.
Can the affiliates find the desired links quite easily?
Say you have set up great links and banners. But your affiliate software does not find it easily from the affiliate panel. Then all efforts will go in waste. This situation will be worst if you are selling large number of products and you want to have text links for each product. If your affiliate can not have option to search it will be next to impossible to find it from 1000 text links listed in a single page.
Can the affiliates define their own set links?
While doing affiliate marketing you will meet some proactive affiliates. They are expert. They will like to define their own links that goes with their site or campaign. It will take too much of your time if you rush to make all the promos/links as per their instruction. But there is chance 1 out of 4 such affiliate can bring good business.
Affiliate defined links are great solutions in this situation. They can create their own promo (text links/ banners) from affiliate panel and use it just like other links.
Will the affiliates have freedom of creating link on the spot � not copying from affiliate panel?
Extra active affiliates will never like the idea of copying link from affiliate panel and pasting it at their websites. Though all 3rd party affiliate software works on the basis of this basic assumption but this only works fine when someone put one or two links their website. This does not work when affiliates want to place article link, say at 100 places distributed in different articles. To solve this problem the affiliate must have some sort of formula, say, just add aid=765 at the end of any link.
Do you get maximum SEO benefits from the affiliate links?
All affiliate links are external links. We know external links plays a big role to Google organic search ranking. So it will be great loss to you if google does not treat your affiliate links as valid external links.
There is an every chance of it if the links looks like paid links. This chance increases if the links are redirected and/or come from non-relevant web pages. The ideal link for SEO is natural link.
So it does make sense to check if your affiliate software vendor has any option to avoid redirected links or additional query string with any link.
For more related articles visit: http://www.euraffiliates.com/articles.php
