clickbank links

[karlm]

I'm not 100% certain if this is the right location to ask, so mods - my apologies if it is the wrong area, but having read the 'announcement' it still seems relevant.

I have a question I'd like to address regarding clickbank, links in the footer and SE's attitudes towards permanent links.

I've signed up with clickbank - which, depending on how my test goes (removal of ztmc links) goes, will become a permanent feature on my footer.

I've only added a couple for the moment, so I don't expect any huge crowd just yet. However, I'm informed that having rotating ads from ztmc has a drastic affect on SEO performance...

Once I've collected a good number of relevant products from clickbank, I intend to place them as rotating ads in my footer, much like ztmc was - but because they will be hand picked by me - they will clearly be specific and 100% relevent to the focus of my website.

So, my questions are:

Is it ok to have rotating (using internal rotation script) ads within my footer?
How will SEO be affected (if at all?) as these are internally held links and unlike ztmc, will be 100% related content / links?
Should I remove them from the footer and place them elsewhere (e.g. links directory - which may affect url / interfere with affiliation)?
Does anyone have any further advise I should consider?

[SEOvB]

If ZTMC is a co-op network or some place people buy/sell links then yes that will be a major negative effect SEO wise and should be removed as fast as possible.

Clickbank links won't effect things because you aren't trying to game the engines or participating in "shady" link networks. Google knows clickbank is affiliate marketing site, and won't penalize you for having their links present.

I do suggest not over doing it though, and limiting the number of affiliate links you load in your footer not just for SEO purposes but also for the end user.

[karlm]

Nice one, thanks for the tip.

At this time, I've only added five to the footer. I was, as I mentioned, thinking of using a rotation script to put five (or so) links so as to give the viewer something different to look at.

To be honest, I hadn't considered ztmc as 'shady', I thought they were a legit company doing a legit link sharing. I've written to them already and told them I will be disabling their links as of the 18th of this month while I run some tests (me checking the SEO after their removal, basically).

I don't suspect I will get the $20 from clickbank that I get from ztmc, but if it (removal of ztmc) brings more viewers, hence more adsense impressions/clicks - then I can hopefully recoup that loss in other ways.

I recently purchased vbseo, and although there was an initial drop, I've reviewed the month since implimenting it and seen an increase in pageviews, unique visitors, etc.

Thanks for you time to explain some basics for me.

[SEOvB]

I'm sure ZTMC is a good company, however that method of link swapping is highly frowned upon. I watched a PR5 PC help site go from 4-5k uniques monthly from google to 200 monthly and PR0 from serving up Co-op program links.