If you promote an affiliate program and are not redirecting your affiliate links, you may be missing out on traffic and commissions opportunities. Redirecting your affiliate program links helps to minimize spam filtering of your email campaigns, increase the acceptance of article submissions, build backlinks to your site, and reduce “click fear”.
Minimize Spam Filtering
If you are promoting an affiliate program through email, other (unscrupulous) affiliates of the same company may be indirectly hurting the delivery rate of your messages. Email filters will block messages that contain content or links associated with spam. Even if you send your message only to subscribers who have double opted-in to your list, your messages may still be blocked if it contains a URL used by spammers.
Search Engine Optimization
Most affiliate program URLs look something like http://www.example.com/?id=123. Unfortunately, most search engines have limited or no ability to read these links.
Google(TM) warns, “If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls...