Affiliate Link Styles
Post Affiliate Pro is a flexible affiliate application that allows you to fully customize it to your needs. It supports a variety of affiliate link styles and you can easily choose the most suitable affiliate link style for your needs, with a single click.
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Standard links (Redirect)
Standard affiliate links (Redirect), formerly "Old style tracking" work like any other link. To create a click the link always points to a script in your Post Affiliate Pro installation folder including some affiliate variables of Post Affiliate Pro:
scripts/click.php?a_aid=refid&a_bid=73d672s1
This script registers a click to an affiliate with the particular refid and a commission computed based on the campaign to which the banner identified by a_bid variable belongs.
When the click is saved, the target URL from this banner is used for redirection. So even if you click on a link like this:
www.yoursite.com/pap_directory/scripts/click.php?a_aid=refid&a_bid=73d672s1
finally you will end up at the destination URL (target URL) of the banner defined in the application and having the ID represented by the value of a_bid in the link you have clicked.
This type of affiliate link is not the best for SEO. For the best SEO use Anchor links or Direct links.
New style links
This style of linking is very common and is used on many websites. It calls the parameters directly from the URL, and the link looks like this:
www.anydomain.com/shop/?a_aid=refid&a_bid=73d672s1
Anchor links
This is the same tracking method as "New Style Links", but with one difference which makes the linking more powerful.
Nowadays, people like SEO optimized websites, and these type of links (anchor links) are the best for performing SEO.
They are even better than the links rewritten with MOD rewrite (.htaccess). The anchor links work the same way as "New Style Links", but now the variables are called as an anchor - within the page. Google loves these kind of links, so your tracking will win with this style. The links look like this:
www.examplesite.com/#a_aid=refid&a_bid=73d672s1
SEO Links with Mod Rewrite
This kind of tracking is the most difficult kind to manage, but can result in good, search angine friendly links. We still believe that the anchor links are more effective than the SEO links; however some merchants do not like the idea of having any parameters in the URL (including anchor), so these kinds of SEO links with Mod Rewrite are the only option for them.
Example of a link:
www.postaffiliatepro.com/refid/73d672s1.htm
Direct Links
The DirectLinks is an advanced feature that allows your affiliates to link directly to your site without additional parameters in the URL.
Click below to read more about this type of linking:
Learn more about Direct Link tracking
