Should Affiliate Programs Penalize SEO Efforts?

In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talks in the affiliate community about the possibility of Amazon dropping affiliate sales generated through search engine results pages in the U.S. Amazon has already indicated that it won’t be paying affiliates in the U.K if their affiliate links get ranked on Google. Here is what Amazon had to say about this issue to its UK affiliates:

In addition, as of February 1, 2010 we will no longer pay referral fees on purchases made by customers who are referred to http://www.amazon.co.uk or http://www.javari.co.uk via Free Search Results. Free Search Results are links containing an Associate’s tag displayed in a search engine’s free, natural, or organic search results in response to a search query which send customers directly to an Amazon site without the customer first being sent to an Associate’s site and the customer clicking on a link to arrive at the Amazon site.

These changes do not prohibit you from purchasing paid search advertisements or submitting links to search engines so long as the links that appear on the search engines send customers to your site.

That of course doesn’t mean that you can’t make money by optimizing your website for search engines and get ranked that way. In some ways it’s understandable for Amazon taking such an action. There are plenty of SEO experts who can get their links up high in the rankings and make money that way. Amazon wants to reduce consumer confusion by making you take people to your own site before bringing them to Amazon.

Having said that, I don’t believe Amazon disregarding affiliate sales generated through free search is such a good idea. First of all, there are many ways affiliate could feel left out by such a policy. And that’s assuming that Amazon is actually capable of tracking all the sales generated through free search results. I am not even sure if it’s good for business. Think about it. Affiliates may be making money off of Amazon, but they do help bring in customers as well. This move to reduce affiliate payments doesn’t bode well on Amazon’s image.

Affiliate marketing is still going strong, but I have to admit the industry could be on its last legs as economy continues to struggle. Our lawmakers are still talking about the possibility of introducing more taxes (possibly Internet tax) all around the nation. So far the idea has not been successful. The FTC is expected to start cracking down on some affiliates as well. Things are certainly not looking good for affiliates who haven’t mastered the game.