Always use rel="nofollow" for affiliate links!

[LiveCasinoPartners]

When I do my keyword phrase analysis on the search engines I always see casinos and not casino affiliates in the top ten results. Most if not all of them don't change their content at all. I'm concluding two thing from this.

The first conclusion is that fresh content isn't the most important seo factor. If it was then these casino sites who rarely (if at all) publish new content would be anywhere near the top ten on competitive keyword phrases.

The second conclusion is that inbound links are bar far the single most important seo factor for serp placement. These casinos are throught out time making our job harder by accumulating some major link juice through affiliate banners (both text and graphic).

On every single banner I've seen so far, the casinos are trying to gain link juice. Don't do it. Always add a rel="nofollow" in the link.

The next thing that gets me going are the casinos that have their website name too prominently in the banner. Imagine how many direct type ins they are getting. I like to only promote banners that have the least chance the players will go directly to the browser and type in the casino url directly.

Better yet; place all your banners locally, make a 301 redirect for all affiliate programs with a rel="nofollow" in the url. I suspect that this will also help passively inhibit the casinos direct marketting (no commision for us) and not trigger any potential penalties from the search engines for being "affiliate" or "mirror" websites.

This is common sense and already standard practice for the vets here, but I'd thought I'd share my affirmations.. lol

[matted]

Wager - regarding the banners, are you using non-standard sizes? 468x60 is the worst size to use. Many people I ask actually feel like they are being cheated when the click one of those. So they will type in the URL - it makes them feel like they weren't sold the product, but found it themselves. There are fewer reservations about other sizes.

The NOFOLLOW is a good idea. Wish I thought of it! I wonder how the SE's treat your site with a bunch of those. I know they dont like aff sites... if they truly dont follow those links, then they may think you are an info-only type site which helps credibility.


Only problem with SE conclusions is they seem to change every 6 months...

[ck8795]

A good example is Full Tilt. Every FT banner comes with an anchor text associated with it using Online Poker as keywords. Type in online poker into your google search and voila it's FT.

Mind you I have not done the no follow myself, because I wasnt exactly sure how to do it ( I know still a newb) but I have always deleted the anchor text from their banner HTML.

[helpyou]

The first conclusion is that fresh content isn't the most important seo factor. If it was then these casino sites who rarely (if at all) publish new content would be anywhere near the top ten on competitive keyword phrases.

yes, I agree with you but you remeber that the content is important to have new players.
if one have one old content, one'll have one low convert of visitators in players.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

yes, I agree with you but you remeber that the content is important to have new players.
if one have one old content, one'll have one low convert of visitators in players.

I agree 100%. In order to convert and maintain a player's interest you do need fresh content. Your absolutely right. I was isolating Search Engine Result Placement only, and not factoring in whether or not you can convert or maintain a player.

Thank's for making that point.

[Doolally]

I've recently started using rel="nofollow" on my home page. What you have to remember though is that Google wants to see you linking out to worthwhile sites so it's probably not best to use it on all of your links.

Again, it's one of those precarious balancing acts we're expected to perform for the search engines!

It's great if you allow user comments though, helps cut down on the spam you receive.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I've recently started using rel="nofollow" on my home page. What you have to remember though is that Google wants to see you linking out to worthwhile sites so it's probably not best to use it on all of your links.

Again, it's one of those precarious balancing acts we're expected to perform for the search engines!

That's what I'm worried about. Having too many rel="nofollow" is bound to hurt the site. Is there a better way to hide (mask) links so they don't look like affiliate links.

If all the affiliate links were Javascript would that do it?

[AussieWebmaster]

I've recently started using rel="nofollow" on my home page. What you have to remember though is that Google wants to see you linking out to worthwhile sites so it's probably not best to use it on all of your links.

Again, it's one of those precarious balancing acts we're expected to perform for the search engines!

It's great if you allow user comments though, helps cut down on the spam you receive.

No fol is a smart play.... Google loves it. It got a lot of mention at SES San Jose last week

[bb1web]

Wager,

can you for those of us .. like myself ..... that are just not very savvy ....

give an exact example of what the no fol code might look like when attached to a banner?

frankly... i'd do it but i'm lost lol. last thing I want to do is lose what I'm already gaining.

thanks in advance.

[Doolally]

Here's an example, of how a no follow link should be implemented. It works for a banner or text link. The code is setup exactly as normal with ref="nofollow" directly after the href="xxxxx" code.

href="http://www.link to casino site.com" rel="nofollow">Casino Site</a>

Hope this helps.

[big fish]

the no follow tags make things much easier. there were more complicated ways of doing things before, and now you can just use the no follow tag and you will stop bleeing PR to the casinos and poker rooms. thanks google

[AussieDave]

Hi All,

Any way you can use if your using a javascript window opener?

EG:

href="javascript:popUp('http://www.mydomain.com/Default.aspx?BTag=ad_217249')"

Cheers



Dave

[Mahmud]

ahh, i never used no follow. actually i did not know about it.
i will try to use no follow on casino and poker site. thanks for the valuable info.

[bb1web]

thanks D:

I'd have done it backwards lol.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

bb1web,
Sorry I haven't posted this earlier. My family is in town and I've been spending a lot of time with them doing the "tourist" thing here. We are redoing the museams, zoos etc.. This is the most time I've spent outdoors since.. well.. A long time lol.

Here's an example of an image banner using the nofolllow tag:

<a href="CASINO AFFILIATE TRACKING URL" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.casino-image-location-url.com?banner=whatever" alt="key word phrase related to the link" ></a>

A text link would look like:

<a href="http://www.casinoaffiliateurl.com?aff=affiliatelink" rel="nofollow">casino keyword phrase</a> 

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to mask a website so it's not branded as an "affiliate" site by the search engines.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

double posted (edited)

[aksana]

I made a script that to hide my aff links, for example, my link to XXX casino is www.mydomain.com/casinos/play/xxx-casino/, this url run a script which finds a real url of this casino in the database and opens this url.

I also blocked direcrtories "/play/", "/casinos/play/" in robots.txt for all robots. It works well for almost all robots, but MSN indexes these urls, and I don't understand why? I know that MSN understands robots.txt, but it looks like not.

[Rakeback]

What you have to remember though is that Google wants to see you linking out to worthwhile sites so it's probably not best to use it on all of your links.

This is a SEO myth, and considered to be untrue. Outgoing links to quality sites can add value to your users, and in this way organically grow your incoming links from relevant sites over time. But outgoing links are completely controlled by the webmaster, so there is no reason for Google to judge your site based on them.

[JR_Ewing]

I'm nuking my post. I should not have posted publicly concerning this. Sorry.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

Ok guys..
I've got some good definitive intel from Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin (aka Randfish).

http://www.stonetemple.com/blog/?p=187

The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt’ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There’s no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links

So you can use it without worrying about whether or not Google will think you are a spammer for trying to control your page rank flow. It's designed to help you do just that, in order for google to deliver the best most accurate search results possible.