Happy Thursday Reader!
Between launching the dashboard, a mastermind group, and just personal life, I feel like I've barely had the chance to connect with you lately! What's new with you? How are things going?? My inbox & DMs are always open if you wanna chat 🤗
Earlier this week I asked on my Instagram story what you'd like to learn about this week. One response I received was "best practices for affiliate links in blog posts", so that's what we'll be talking about today!
Affiliate links are unique URLs that you can use to promote products & services to your audience. If someone purchases the thing using your affiliate link, you receive some sort of commission.
However, it isn't as simple as just pasting links throughout your blog. There are certain guidelines to keep in mind when using them!
Affiliate Link Tips & Best Practices
1) Tag them as "nofollow"
In your blog post, it's important to mark affiliate links as "nofollow". This tells search engines to ignore that link.
If you want to read up on nofollow vs dofollow, check out this post!
To mark links as nofollow, click on the link while editing your blog post and check the box "Search engines should ignore this link (mark as nofollow)" under "Advanced". Don't forget to hit "Save"!
If you're using WPRM and adding affiliate links to your recipe card, you can mark them as nofollow under "Equipment Affiliate Fields" (for equipment) and "Ingredient Links" (for ingredients).
I haven't used any plugins for affiliate links (honestly not sure why 😅), but Tasty Links and Easy Affiliate Links were recommended by fellow food bloggers if you want to look into those!
2) Have them open in a new tab
For accessibility purposes, WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) recommends that links such as affiliates should open in new tabs. You might've noticed this setting in the photo above 😉
WCAG also recommends making it clear to the user that the link will open in a new tab. I am not on top of this, but there are plugins that can add accessibility icons next to your links if you want to be super compliant (I think External Links does this).
3) Let your audience know that they're affiliate links
According to the FTC's guidelines about affiliate link disclosure, "...the guiding principle is that it has to be clear and conspicuous. The closer the disclosure is to your recommendation, the better." More info on that here.
Best practice would be to have a disclosure right next to the link.
However, I just have a blanket statement in my post info saying "This post may contain affiliate links" at the top of each post. If you have Feast, you can edit this in the plugin settings.
If you're an Amazon affiliate, you'll also want to make sure you're following their guidelines. I have their statement, "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases." in my footer.
4) Don't be spammy
When you're adding affiliate links to blog posts, make sure they're actually helpful to the user and make sense there. Don't go adding a ton of affiliate links just to try to make an extra $0.23.
I've seen rumors that using affiliate links and/or having affiliate disclosures hurt blogs in the Google updates. I personally haven't found any evidence validating this. Myself and many others who were not impacted by the Google updates use affiliate links properly.
You can read Google's link spam guidelines here if you'd like! In general though, if you're worried about it, just don't use them 🤷♀️
I think that's all I have for affiliate link tips & best practices 😊 I hope you found them helpful!!
