Don’t get hijacked and prevent getting penalized by the search engines
Have you ever noticed blogs like John Chow, ProBlogger, and every other major affiliate marketer use redirect pages to send you to their affiliate links? If not, check it out, head over to JohnChow.com and hover your mouse over one of his ads and the URL in your status bar (lower left of your browser) will look something like this: “http://www.johnchow.com/go/dealdotcom.php”. It doesn’t look like the affiliate links you are normally issued (i.e.: “http:///www.dealdotcom.com/?=1237674″ or similar).
Why? A few reasons.
- having a redirect page can help prevent you from having your affiliate links hijacked. Yes you heard right. Your affiliate links can be hijacked. There are programs (malware, virus’, etc.) out there that many people have on their computers without even knowing that will detect when an affiliate link is clicked and replace your affiliate ID with the hijackers. I’ve read many articles on this subject and it’s been said 30-40% of all affiliate earning are lost to hijacking. Do a Google search for “Affiliate link hijacking” and you’ll see what I mean.
- The search engines can penalize you for having links that take you to certain affiliate sites. They just may consider it link selling and reduce your site’s value, and in return, you rankings. Bummer.
- You may want to track how many times your affiliate links are clicked without the potential error many stat programs can return. I recommend using Google Analytics because not only can you track clicks on an affiliate link, but using their funnel system you can track if someone that has clicked an affiliate link, goes on to click a purchase link and actually completes a sale! This will help you to make adjustments to optimize your affiliate marketing. How to do this in detail is a whole other post in itself as there’s a lot to it though. Head over to Google Analytics and check it out - it’s really not that hard to figure out and set up.
How to set up a redirect page with tracking
First set up a directory on your server for your redirect pages to go. To make it easy I recommend creating a directory simply named “go” (i.e.: www.yoursite.com/go/). That was easy.
Next you’ll need to create a page to do the redirecting. You can reuse this page for all your affiliate links by simply making a few changes and saving it with a new name. I’ve provided a template you’re welcome to use. Just copy the green text below, and paste it into a text editor (I recommend using “Notepad” - NOT MS Word):
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”en-us”>
<title>YOUR TITLE</title>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
<script>window.location=”http://www.affiliate_link.com/affiliate_ID#”;</script>
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1; url= http://www.affiliate_link.com/affiliate_ID#”>
</head><body>
<p align=”center”>You are being taken to the correct page.
<br>
If the page does load after 5 seconds, <A HREF= http://www.affiliate_link.com/affiliate_ID# onMouseOver=”status=’status bar being turned off’; return true;” onMouseOut=”status=http://www.affiliate_link.com; return true;”>Click Here</A><!– place your Google Analytics code below this (you can also delete this line if you want) –>
<!– place your Google Analytics code above this (you can also delete this line if you want) –>
</body></html>
Here’s the text you just copied explained (click to view full size):
So all you need to do is change the items that need to be changed and save the file with an easy to remember name that ends with .php. For example if you were to use it for a redirect page for a hostmonster affililiate link you could name it: “hm.php” or “hostmonster.php” or what ever you’d like - but just remember to save it with the .php extension!
Now upload this new file to the “go” directory you created earlier and your done! Now, whenever you want to place a link in your site that goes to an affiliate link you would reference the page you created for it, i.e.: www.yoursite.com/go/hostmonster.php
I don’t have a self hosted site? Is there anything I can do?
If you can’t upload pages to your site, you’re out of luck. But you can hide the affiliate link in the browser’s status bar (this only works in Firefox though). Just use the code below and replace the first URL with your affiliate link, the second URL with the URL you’d like to show up in the status bar, and the link text to what you want the link text to be (all in bold):
<a href= http://www.affiliate_link.com/affiliate_ID# onMouseOver=”status=’status bar being turned off’; return true;” onMouseOut=”status=http://www.affiliate_link.com; return true;”>LINK TEXT</a>
Any questions? Comment below and I’ll do what I can to help you!
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6 responses so far ↓
1 Daily Tech Impressions // Apr 20, 2008 at 2:52 am
Right on, i wonder if this code would work for commission junction affiliate links?
[Reply]
Ty Hurd reply on April 20, 2008:
Yup - It sure will!
[Reply]
2 ameo // Apr 20, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Wow , i just heard about that links theft from your ,
you know right now i’m still working on it’s basic infrastructure
i’m sure i’ll work on this matter once i turn my blog to the commercial direction
good post
[Reply]
3 Top Stumbles - Best of StumbleUpon // Apr 21, 2008 at 7:00 am
Hide your affiliate links…
Have you ever noticed blogs like John Chow, ProBlogger, and every other major affiliate marketer use redirect pages to send you to their affiliate links? If not, check it out, head over to JohnChow.com and hover your mouse over one of his ads and the U…
4 Geoserv // Apr 21, 2008 at 7:01 am
STUMBLED!
I use a plugin for ym Wordpress blog call wp-affiliate does the same sort of thing.
VOTED for you at:
http://www.newsdots.com/tutorials/hide-your-affiliate-links/
[Reply]
5 make money online // Apr 22, 2008 at 7:20 am
Hey good post !!!
[Reply]
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