SEO News Blog

Via an email to affiliates, Amazon.com announced they are scaling back their associates program in North America by disallowing direct linking from paid search results:

After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.

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Question: We were thinking of mirroring our website by giving affiliates subdomains with our content like xyz.oursite.com. Is this a good idea or a duplicate content nightmare?

Answer: Giving affiliates the same set of data is indeed a duplicate content nightmare, and it makes it hard for the affiliates to push their sites into the core organic parts of the web. If they have a product database and the same reviews and content that exist as the core branded site there is nothing remarkable about what they are doing. You can look back to this post on leaked human review documents to see how Google views affiliate sites.

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Many Thin Affiliate Sites Look Real

Some of my friends publish fake review sites which organize product recommendations by using the following quality measurement and rating system (affiliate payout per conversion * conversion rate). If people buy it, it must be good.

I have other friends who do real in-depth reviews, but they use such poor formatting that their content looks less trustworthy and more advertisement-like than fake review websites.

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Question: I am new to the market and have a product I am going to launch soon at a similar price-point to SEO Book. I am wondering if I should launch with an affiliate program, and if it will provide a substantial return prior to

Answer: I would say off the start don’t enable an affiliate program until you have a better feel for the amount of effort required per purchaser and have brand awareness. I like launching without an affiliate program because it makes citations appear more natural. If you are launching a MLM hype program then a multi tiered affiliate program is a must, but if not the best option is to wait until you better learn your market and are well integrated into your market.

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