So I thought I would take a few minutes to describe my experience with Clickbank affiliate links and SEO. I had a site that I had no affiliate links on where I did a review on some products. The idea was to get this site ranked on Google and then I would add in some affiliate links.
I got ranked in about slot 3 on the first page of Google for the product name, which by the way was my target keyword. I decided it was time to pull the trigger so I added in my links. I added direct links to Clickbank products. Big mistake!
The site within a few days dropped off the face of Google! I thought oh damn, Sandbox. So I waited, and waited, and waited. I thought surely I should be out of the sandbox by now. Never did I think the outbound links would have such an impact on my site.
One day without even really thinking about it I used the PHP redirect that you can find here
A few days letter I was checking analytics and saw a HUGE increase in traffic. I searched Google for my keywords, sure enough right back where I started.
All that time I thought I was in the sandbox it was really the way I was linking to the Clickbank products. Now I have positive cashflow on that site.
Lesson: Never link directly to a Clickbank product or any affiliate link for that matter. Set up a folder with the product name… www.yourdomain.com/productname and put an index.php file in that folder with the code from here. Point all your affiliate links to www.yourdomain.com/productname and you will not be punished by the big G!
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