Does Skimlinks affect my SEO or Google PageRank?

Nope.

But the content you create does.

Top publishers like Huffington Post and Conde Nast trust Skimlinks to power their commerce strategies without compromising their search traffic. Evergreen commerce content is incredibly important to our publishers: 60% of commerce revenue in our network comes from articles over two months old, which rely almost exclusively on search for traffic.

The common misconception is that monetizing content with affiliate links can cause SEO problems, but Google’s own guidelines state that “good” commerce content that adds “substantial value” and is “relevant” can rank well in Google search results.

If that’s music to your ears, you can sign up to make money from your valuable original content here

What Google does take issue with is the kind of content publishers create using affiliate links and how “differentiated” it is from what’s available elsewhere. They also care a lot about the user experience and ensuring search results provide value to people.

They have a particularly dim view of “thin” affiliate content, where sites use content that is mass-produced and available elsewhere in exactly the same format, or are entirely dedicated to content featuring affiliate links, without adding any original content on top of the product links themselves.

Indeed, Google’s guidelines suggest publishers always ask themselves why a user would visit their site first, rather than proceed direct to the original merchant. If content does not add “substantial value” to the shoppers journey, through providing information like product reviews, ratings, comparison to other products and product availability at different price points, the content is unlikely to index well in Google search results.

So what does this mean for you as a publisher, using Skimlinks to monetize your content and creating articles with affiliate links?

• • You can create content with affiliate links, as long as it is original and includes information that is valuable for readers, like a review of the product

• • Products you write about should be relevant to your readers: You’re more likely to rank in search results for products that relate to content you already create and on top of that, your readers are more likely to buy products they would expect you to write about (e.g. if you’re a hiking website, write about walking boots)

• Update content at regular intervals: Fresh information is more likely to be crawled by Googlebot and clicked on by users

And as long as you keep that in mind when you create commerce content, you should have no concerns about using Skimlinks and any impact on your SEO or Google Search PageRank.

So now you know there’s no affect on your SEO from working Skimlinks, sign up and start making money from your original commerce content today