Having Affiliate Links Indexed by Google

So I've affiliate offer which I promote through content sites, which I keep track of conversions by using redirects. For any given affiliate link in my content, the link would look like this:

mymoneysite.com/offers/my-offer-url/

where any time someone requests a url with /offers/ in it, I know they've clicked an affiliate link.

Pretty standard setup I feel like, I know looots of people doing the same thing.

Something I've notice lately however, is that these urls are getting indexed by google, and are actually ranking for certain keywords. All the meta information for the search result comes from the page that I've redirected to (the affiliate offer) such as price, rating, description, etc... So effectively my site is ranking for products, when it is just a review-type site. I have like 10-15 posts, but like 75+ indexed pages in google, many of which are really affiliate offer landing pages, but with my redirect link.

I've certainly done the rank a page, then 301 it to an affiliate offer before, which has the same end result. This is somehow ranking individual links on my pages as separate pages in SERPs.

I'm not complaining, but this hasn't been part of my plan.

Has anyone else seen this? Is anyone else doing this?

I am also using redirects for aff links (Meta fresh) But my links never get indexed. If your links are indexed and ranking its good news for you.

Nut-Nights said:

I am also using redirects for aff links (Meta fresh) But my links never get indexed. If your links are indexed and ranking its good news for you.

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Yeah, I'm excited—but have NO idea how they got indexed. I'd love to understand better how it's come about so I can repeat it on other sites.

@judaculla May be you are making them d o f o l l o w when you are linking them ? I use nofollow tag for my redirects.

Nut-Nights said:

@judaculla May be you are making them d o f o l l o w when you are linking them ? I use nofollow tag for my redirects.

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Tha's a good thought. Typically I make all my nofollow as well, but maybe I overlooked a few ....

That's my best guess so far.

Could you please clarify, just want to make sure I understand...

So basically, you have your content page, then when you promote the product you send them to moneysite.com/offer which then redirects to the affiliate offer in order to keep track of conversions correct?

Do you make a new page for each product you promote then?

Also, I've heard from a few people that you should nofollow amazon links (though I don't know why, about to research this), but since your offer pages are ranking I'm guessing you aren't doing that?

onelasttime said:

Could you please clarify, just want to make sure I understand...

So basically, you have your content page, then when you promote the product you send them to moneysite.com/offer which then redirects to the affiliate offer in order to keep track of conversions correct?

Do you make a new page for each product you promote then?

Also, I've heard from a few people that you should nofollow amazon links (though I don't know why, about to research this), but since your offer pages are ranking I'm guessing you aren't doing that?

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The content page and offer page are the same. I'm just marketing the content, which has affiliate links embedded in it naturally, in the form of product reviews & etc...

So, someone comes to my page, clicks a link, and ends up on a merchant's site that I am promoting.

The site is a wordpress site, using a redirect manager plugin (quick redirects). It's got an option to add a nofollow attribute to the redirects, which I may have misunderstood the functionality of. I had assumed that any redirects were redirecting to nofollow links somehow, although I am know unsure.

In an odd way these redirects do indeed get indexed. This won't happen if your links are nofollow (a link is still a link, doesn't matter if there is a redirect somewhere, it's the end destination that counts). I bet there are other factors in play here - why does google rank our link, not the original source?

Do the links carry meta tags of destination site?

tryitnowdude said:

Do the links carry meta tags of destination site?

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Yes, it's everything from the destination site, except it's credited with my site name and url