Basic question re text links

Hi, I'm currently building my site, and adding in the text links on the poker site review pages. Because my site marketing is aimed at organic SEO I don't want to give any link juice away to the operators, so my link text looks like this.

pokerstars.com/?source=tracker" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">

...where tracker is my code.

However, PokerStars are telling me that this won't work. Here's the email exchange below.

I don't believe this and think my code is fine. If I cloaked my links, Stars wouldn't even be able to see the code but they would recognise my tracker on inbound traffic and downloads. Or have I got this wrong?

I also know that Stars has taken an SEO hammering recently, so I'm wondering if they're giving me BS in the hopes of me (PR=0) giving them a link.

Can anyone tell me if my code is okay?

Also can anyone tell me how I can check my trackers are working, without emailing the company?

Thanks in advance

Alex (email below)

Hello,
Thank you for your email.

I have spoken to our developer and he assures me that the links will not work with this coding in.
The link you need to use is the one given in the example on our text link page:


pokerstars.com/?source=tracker" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">

You can see this by going to Marketing and Text Links.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.
Kind Regards,

P♠kerStarsPartners Support Team



-----Original Message-----



Subject: RE: Checking trackers

Hi XX

I'm a bit confused by this. The target=blank and rel=nofollow, simply makes the link open in a new tab/window, and doesn't let Google see the link (as my site is totally focussed on natural SEO I can't afford to give away the link juice).

This is standard html code, so why would this make the tracker not work?

Best

I do believe what they are telling you is wrong, but likely is because they do no know any better and not because they want the link juice.

I am not a Stars affiliate so I do not know what the code looks like from them, but adding the tags you did should hurt tracking.

To test that the links work, you could have a friend sign up as a player using your link and see if credit is given.

Rick
Universal4

Provide PokerStar shows in their stats downloads and clicks, it will be sufficient just two make one or two downloads using a link and then check the stats.

I use the no follow and target arguments on my Stars links and they work perfectly fine. Just be sure the tracking code is right. "nofollow" and target="_blank" will not affect the tracking.

*been doing my links this way for several years an have signups at stars.

Agreed. The extra code won't affect your tracking at all.

I agree too. adding the extra rel="nofollow" will only tell google not to pass link juice. it's currently thought in the SEO comunity that the rel="nofollow" doesn't pass PR, but it does pass authority (supposedly).

Try the link with the rel="nofollow" and have a friend sign up to see if it's tracked.

I agree that the link should work just fine. I would add though that adding 'nofollow' to outgoing links won't conserve the 'juice' anymore. My understanding is that the way nofollowed links are handled was changed min-2009.

See this post as reference hxxp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Thanks everyone for the great advice!

Alex

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Squigley

I agree that the link should work just fine. I would add though that adding 'nofollow' to outgoing links won't conserve the 'juice' anymore. My understanding is that the way nofollowed links are handled was changed min-2009.

See this post as reference hxxp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

---

Interesting - so it doesn't stop PR leaking from your site, but it does stop it reaching the target site.

Probably not worth the hassle unless you're trying to rank higher than pokerstars :pray:

There is no effect for either you put "nofollow" or "target blank" code in your tracking code. I used it many times.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chips

I use the no follow and target arguments on my Stars links and they work perfectly fine. Just be sure the tracking code is right. "nofollow" and target="_blank" will not affect the tracking.

*been doing my links this way for several years an have signups at stars.

---

The way I handle this is by having internal pages of my site point to another internal page which contains the tracking code. Then restrict the pages via robots file to not index the pages which contain the tracking code.

Is that the best way to do it?

Even this way though, some of the pages I have restricted by no follow in my robots.txt still appear in google webmasters. Am I doing something wrong?

Another quick question - should you put "nofollow" on links in internal pages that link to the internal page with the tracking code? Any benifits to that?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UltimatePokerBonus

The way I handle this is by having internal pages of my site point to another internal page which contains the tracking code. Then restrict the pages via robots file to not index the pages which contain the tracking code.

---

We must be careful not to overdo such things with the result that the content becomes perfect to divert attention of the robots, but also too complicated for the visitors of the site to grasp because of a clever method used to slice a piece of information through interlinking.

I'm with the general consensus on this one. Use the no follow and _blank attributes. Also be sure to use robots.txt to block the folder that contains the referral pages.

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