Some time back we were having trouble with one of our blogs losing its search rankings and we decided that maybe it was because Google didn’t like the number of affiliate links on the site. We had an affiliate link on just about every blog post and some blog posts had more than one.

So we decided that one way of solving this was to add the nofollow tag to each affiliate link. I’m not really sure whether this did the trick or not as a number of other factors came into play at the time to boost our rankings again but even so we continue to add nofollow as normal practice each time we add an affiliate link.

For those who at this point are wondering what the hec nofollow is, take a look at our detailed blog post on this subject – What is dofollow and nofollow?

So how do you go about adding nofollow to an affiliate link?

There are two ways actually. The first is a manual approach and the second automatic…well probably not totally automatic but it is a bit easier than the manual method.

Manual Method

This method is quite simple but does involve you playing around with the code. Now I am going to assume that you have already had a play around with HTML code at some point otherwise you probably wouldn’t know how to add the code for your affiliate links. If you are new to WordPress however you may be wondering just where the code is hidden.

In WordPress it is found under the HTML tab. So when you are typing a blog post look up a little and you will see the HTML tab sitting just above the text box to the right.

Once you click on that tab you will see all the HTML code for the post your are writing. This is where you can insert the code for your affiliate links.

HTML tab in WordPress2

Now that you have found the code you need to add the nofollow tag. Locate your affiliate link code in the html and then insert the nofollow tag which is rel=”nofollow”  just after the url. So it will look something like this:

<a href=”http://www.afflilatesite.com?AID=12345″ rel=”nofollow”>Text Goes Here</a>

The affiliate code may look a bit different to the above but just look for the http link in the code and pop your nofollow tag just after it.

Automatic Method

This method I like because I don’t have to play around with the code. This involves using a plugin called TinyMCE Advanced.  To upload this plugin to your WordPress blog take the following steps:

1. Click on Plugins–>Add New from the left hand side menu bar on your WordPress Dasboard. This may be in a different location depending on the version of WordPress you are using so you may need to look around for it. If you have a really old version of WordPress then you will need to upload the TinyMCE plugin using a program like Filezilla.

2. In the search field type in ‘tinymce’ and click Search Plugins. The TinyMce Advanced plugin will most likely be the first one in the list of results but if not, just take a look down the list until you see it.

3. Once you have find it in the list click the INSTALL link on the right hand side of the screen. This will install and activate the plugin for you.

4. The plugin will now be displayed in your menu on the left hand side of your dashboard. Scroll down and you will find it listed under the Settings option. If you can’t see it then the plugin probably isn’t activiated. If so, click on Plugins—>Installed and you will see the plugin in the list on that page. Simply click the Activate link to activate it.

5. You can go in and configure it if you like as TinyMCE has a lot of cool features but for the sake of what we are trying to achieve here you really don’t need to.

So now that you have installed the plugin you are ready to use it. To do this you simply click on the ADD NEW post link and start creating a post. You then add an affiliate link in your post which will display as a hyperlink – something like this –> Buy an Ipod.

Add Edit HyperlinkHighlight that link with your mouse and then click on the Insert/edit Link icon on your tool bar just above your post.

You should now have a pop-up menu on your screen. Click the ‘Advance’ tab on that pop-up and then the ‘Relationship Page to Target’ drop-down box. You will see ’nofollow’ as one of the options. Just click that and then click Update. The ‘nofollow’ attribute should now be added to your affiliate link.

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