Affiliate Pages Do Not Rank Well in the Search Engines

OK, so you signed up for one of those affiliate programs where the author offers you a free storefront page containing a unique identifier in the URL.

For example: https://www.somestoredomain.com/your-name-here/

Now you’re wondering how to get organic search engine traffic to start flowing in. Well, I got bad news for you. Chances are, you will receive little to no organic search engine traffic to one of those free subpages.

Here’s why… Your affiliate page is a copy of the main website. This means your page will be seen as duplicate content by the search engines and simply be de-indexed or penalized. The search engines know which page is the original. Furthermore, index page will always get preferential treatment over any subpage when they’re sharing the same content.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: https://www.thirtyonegifts.com. This is the main website. Once you sign up as an affiliate or member, they’ll give you a unique URL where you can send your customers. Your URL might look something like https://www.thirtyonegifts.com/yourusernamehere/. That unique URL will lead you to a page that is an exact copy of the main website. This is duplicate content, and it won’t help you at all in terms of search engine rankings.

Will backlinks help?

I highly doubt it. Even with a ton of backlinks, your affiliate page would simply be seen as a duplicate page and be ignored.

What should you do?

The first option is to build your own website. I’ve repeated this a thousand times, but having a unique site with unique content is not an option. It’s a must for today’s online world. Also, why would you allow someone else to own your website? If you don’t own the domain name and site files, then you don’t own anything. The domain owner has the right and power to do whatever they want with your affiliate page at any given time. Don’t risk losing property or money. Control your own business.

The second option is to buy traffic. A lot of people actually prefer this option because it requires less work and you don’t have to wait for SEO to kick in before you start seeing some results. There are different sources of traffic, so be sure you understand how each works before pulling out your wallet.