Affiliate Classroom Blog

Something Is Rotten in the State of Links. . .

Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 5:02 pm by Matt Van Atta

And that something is called linkrot. It’s an ugly term (then again, any word with “rot” in it is never pretty) that describes a problem for affiliate marketing websites.

Linkrot is the process by which links from one website to another slowly become less accurate, or extinct.

As an affiliate marketer, you drive business to a merchant’s website, so your website will contain links to that site. Say you set up a link to a destination page on the merchant’s site, and turn your attention to other matters. Over time, that link could “break” or become irrelevant due to one of the following:

• The destination page’s URL may have changed.
• The destination page may have been deleted.
• The destination page’s website may have gone down temporarily – or disappeared permanently.
• The destination page’s content may have changed – the link would still work, but your supporting marketing content may not.

Those who worry about the “big picture” of the Internet – as an interconnected venue for both social interaction and commerce – consider linkrot a serious threat. It’s particularly serious for affiliate marketers.

Broken links on your website can lead your target audience to distrust your ability to deliver accurate, up-to-date information or customer service. This negatively impacts not only your revenue stream, but also your reputation – which could persist even if the merchant broke the links, and even if you sign on with another merchant.

Short-term website offers provide a breeding ground for linkrot. Once such offers expire, remove the related links immediately. Otherwise, your site will have either a broken link (because the merchant removed the page) or an active link to obsolete content. Either way, you look bad, because it appears to customers that you’re not tending to business.

Combating linkrot may be drudgery, but you should regularly do the following:

• For a new link on your site, confirm that the destination page URL is correct – especially if the merchant assigns the URL specifically to you.
• Check your site’s links (even links to other pages on your site) and remove those that are broken or no longer relevant.
• Communicate with the merchant to ensure that your links to the merchant’s website are active and that your descriptions of the destination pages match the content on those pages.

Success in affiliate marketing depends on your effectiveness at communication and information delivery. Keeping linkrot off your website will make you more effective in this regard.

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