Getting Affiliate URLs ranked in SERPS and Banking

Going back a couple of months ago someone posted a very interesting thread on how they had got their Amazon affiliate URLs (e.g. amazon.co.uk?tag=exampletag-21) ranked in Google, and were banking off the back of that organic traffic. I can't find the thread, so assume it got moved into JR VIP!

Rather than Amazon (who I think changed their Ts and Cs since to not allow it), I've been testing quite a few other affiliate programmes who use a similar search engine friendly URL structure. I have no problem getting a very large number of URLs indexed and displacing the sites own URLs, but I'm not seeing any clicks within the reporting on these. Almost like the affiliate programmes are not counting clicks coming from search engines.

The affiliate plugins/modules are well known ones used on oscommerce and magento that I've had no success with (PM me if you want any more details).

Anyone had any success with ranking and banking off independent affiliate schemes? I'm not asking for someone to post the platforms that are working (why would anyone want to share that and let that get saturated after all?!), just trying to work out whether it is worth persisting on this method!

Guessing that means either no-one is doing this anymore, or if you find the right platform it works so well no-one wants to talk about it in the open!

Ok, can anyone tell me if the thread talking about getting Amazon URLs ranked appears in JR VIP?

No clue how to do it but just today I saw one of these ranking in the SERPs for a pretty competitive keyword.

I regularly see these type of links in the serps! Don't know if they will stick or not as I am a long-term planner, that's why I don't do them.

Btw, I am seeing ranking affiliate links for the last 2 years!

crusher said:

Btw, I am seeing ranking affiliate links for the last 2 years!

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The same links sticking for 2 years or just affiliate links in general ranking?

I can get them to rank, I just can't find any independent affiliate programmes where the clicks count from the ranking affiliate pages!

Only Monday and having a bad week already with engine management light come on in the car and chipped a tooth, and starting to get peed off with none of these independent affiliate programmes registering clicks! I was hoping someone else might be having some success with it to spur me on!

Dude its gonna be legendary if you can do that. but is it really possible? I don't think so. And if you can rank them they will not last for a long time right?

futurestic06 said:

Dude its gonna be legendary if you can do that. but is it really possible? I don't think so. And if you can rank them they will not last for a long time right?

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I've got my affiliate URLs indexed and outranking the non-affiliate URLs for 4 different websites using independent affiliate schemes (i.e. they host their affiliate scheme themselves and you just have a query string after the URL to denote the visit has come from an affiliate). Across the 4 sites I have several hundred pages indexed with my affiliate code, and these have been steadily increasing over a 2 month period since I kicked off the test.

The problem I face is that none of the independent affiliate schemes I have tested so far seem to register clicks from Google with my affiliate code on them! I'm getting a little commission direct from links I have built to the pages so I know affiliate schemes are functioning ok. So it seems they don't count the traffic from my affiliate pages

The question I am kind of asking is has anyone identified independent affiliate programmes that do allow it? Those that probably haven't closed the loophole yet!

I have the same problem. I can get the URLs ranked but they don't get counted. I'm subbing to this thread in case any one wants to share an exception.

I would guess that the merchants are deduping affilliate sales channels, and anything that seems to be coming directly from google could be seen as either organic or the merchants own ppc traffic and hence you won't get paid for it. Possibly some small scale independant merchants aren't deduping but i would imagine they are few and far between.

LBrown said:

I have the same problem. I can get the URLs ranked but they don't get counted. I'm subbing to this thread in case any one wants to share an exception.

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Good to know other's are trying it and struggling to find one that works - at least I know it's not just me having a run of bad luck on it!

bobred said:

I would guess that the merchants are deduping affilliate sales channels, and anything that seems to be coming directly from google could be seen as either organic or the merchants own ppc traffic and hence you won't get paid for it. Possibly some small scale independant merchants aren't deduping but i would imagine they are few and far between.

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I expected that with larger independent campaigns, but have been surprised that small scale independents appear to be doing it too. Will keep searching for the elusive few!

There must be a few - after all, its in their interest to a certain extent, they are getting commission based SEO!

Nowadays you can rank any kind of links (affiliates too) thanks to SAPE (russian platform).

So if you think your ROI will be good, go for a Sape campaign (they are costly and they stay as long as you pay but they are efficient)

There any many methods. Try to set up your blog on Tumblr with high quality content along with your affiliate link and then boost that Tumblr blog with some high PR backlinks.