Hoplinks should you redirect from another domain?

I always make my hoplinks redirects of pages within the website I am selling the product on. So for product X it would be productx.com/buy-now and that would redirect to my hoplink.

However I am just thinking that as google looks badly (apparently) on affiliate links, is it actually better to set up a different domain for the redirect? That way the negative association is not passed onto the domain I am actually trying to rank?

So for product x on productx.com the link would be byproductx.info ?

Does this make sense? Is it worth it? Just thinking as I am struggling to rank my site above a competitors despite more backlinks and better onsite SEO.

What you need to do (if you haven't already) is exclude the page that redirects to your hoplink from your sitemap. If using Wordpress and Google xml sitemaps, there is a section to choose pages to exclude.

Re: more backlinks, note you may have more links but if your competitor has a strong pyramid structure (check the backlinks of his backlinks) then he/she will continue to out rank you. Its not just number of direct links.

great advice. thanks!

Ill try and change my sitemap now.