EZ Effective Avenue to get links, but do these links pass juice?

[CashCowAdv]

Starting an affiliate program where I'm reaching out to blogs/websites that are authoritative and rank relatively high for synonymous keywords of my commercial keywords.

Problem is, I might have to provide affiliates w/ a UTM parameter to have them jump on board. Do these links w/ UTM parameters such as www.zzz.com/?ref=d3 pass the same amount of juice as www.zzz.com?

Do you think Google has within their algorithm the capability to account for links w/ UTM parameters and immediately discounts them?

It says in Google's Guidelines that Google is against websites that send links to other websites for "exchanging goods or services for links" I'm assuming affiliate marketing falls within this realm, which is basically a link for commission(s).

The way around this is for bloggers to add 'nofollow's to each of their affiliate links'. I've read a few articles that state that affiliate marketers who don't add nofollows in their affiliate link get docked down by Google, not sure if the website being shot a link also gets docked down. Thoughts?

I have 2 options:
Track generic goals from each affiliate partner and to provide them a flat fee if any visitor from their site reaches a specific page on my site. That way, I can get a link that doesn't have a UTM parameter and a legit dofollow

Or

Go down the path of the usual affiliate avenue.

Anyone have experience, thoughts, suggestions?

 

[LinkPlate]

I think you are asking the wrong questions.

1. Why would someone UTM a link back to your website? It's your responsibility to track your referral links - not them.
2. Most referral links will be nofollow, so count on your nofollow/dofollow ration to jump, and we all know Google loves dofollow.
3. Most of your referral links will not be contextual. They will probably have anchor text like (click here, check it out, referral link here, etc...)

Making money from affiliates is hard enough. I wouldn't bother with the stuff you mentioned

 

[Golan]

Came here to say most affiliate links will be nofollow, and that's not only because webmasters dont want to leak the juice but also because google itself demands so from them, but @LinkPlate beat me to it.

 

[CashCowAdv]

Why would someone UTM a link back to your website? It's your responsibility to track your referral links - not them.

So they can track whether leads from their site are actually converting on my site. Or else, they're just blindly trusting me to pay them.

And 2nd, the plan isn't to make money from these affiliate partners. The goal is to get backlinks from them at a low cost or even for free through a value proposition

 

[Ryuzaki]

I'm not saying this is a good idea (I don't think it is compared getting links in other ways), but I can answer some questions:

Do these links w/ UTM parameters such as www.zzz.com/?ref=d3 pass the same amount of juice as www.zzz.com?

Yes, I do. What you need to be careful about is making sure the destination page has a proper canonical pointing to the "non-parameter" version of the page. Otherwise you can end up with indexation problems and duplicate content, etc. Kind of how if you don't lock down your search pages Google can end up indexing a limitless number of duplicate pages as bots enter ?s=keyword all day.

Do you think Google has within their algorithm the capability to account for links w/ UTM parameters and immediately discounts them?

Yes they have the capability. They do this with Amazon and other big affiliate programs. I'd bet that it's not manual like "enter the new affiliate program in this text file" but an algorithmic way of picking it up.

I've read a few articles that state that affiliate marketers who don't add nofollows in their affiliate link get docked down by Google, not sure if the website being shot a link also gets docked down. Thoughts?

They can discount the links, but that doesn't mean they forgive the webmaster who's not using nofollow tags. There's countless stories of sites getting reamed eventually for this. I think it's not a "yes or no" or even a "threshold" thing though. I think it just lowers your quality score, in combination of all the other things lazy webmasters do.

As far as the recipient receiving a penalty... it's very possible. You're receiving "incentivized links" aka "paid links".

1. Why would someone UTM a link back to your website? It's your responsibility to track your referral links - not them.

I'm not in complete agreement with this. With the death of 3rd party cookies, I think UTM parameters are the future again, especially for affiliate programs. Not only do they dodge the 3rd party problems but they can provide almost any amount of info needed, including the creation of new parameters to do nifty things internally on your website, like faceted navigation.

 

[LinkPlate]

I'm not in complete agreement with this. With the death of 3rd party cookies, I think UTM parameters are the future again, especially for affiliate programs. Not only do they dodge the 3rd party problems but they can provide almost any amount of info needed, including the creation of new parameters to do nifty things internally on your website, like faceted navigation.

Agreed. Just pointing out that you should probably provide them with the referral code (with UTM codes included in it) and not to expect the user to put UTM codes for you.