December 30th, 2008 
Pretend that you enter a niche and you want to be able to test the niche quickly and test multiple offers extremely fast in the niche, however, you worry about being hit with quality score issues if you just simply direct link to the affiliate URL you’re given. What should you do? In my opinion one of the best way to direct link is to simply buy a domain name and perform a 301 redirect on that domain name to the URL of the offer your promoting (your affiliate URL).
This task is actually quite easy to perform and hopefully this little post will explain to you exactly how step by step.
The most efficient way to perform a 301 redirect in my opinion is to use a htaccess 301 redirect. It’s extremely easy as well as quick to do!
Step One – Buying a Domain
Uh this is quite obvious, you need a domain to do this, so for the sake of this example we’ll say that I own the domain weightloss.com and will be using that domain name in order to 301 redirect to my affiliate offer I’m promoting. If you don’t have a domain…get one…again, duh!
Step Two – Creating the .htaccess File
The next thing you’ll need to do is open up Notepad (windows) or a similar program if you’re not using windows that will allow you to create a word document without adding any type of extra information to the file. Programs like Microsoft Word will add extra info to the document you save.
In Notepad you’ll need to enter the following code:
redirect 301 / http://www.affiliateurl.com/subid=example
The first part of this code tells your server that anything from the top level of this domain down should be 301 redirected. The URL is the URL that you want it to 301 redirect to. It’s really that simple!
Step Three – Upload to your public_html Folder
After you’ve created your file you need to save it with the file name .htaccess Make sure you put in the . at the beginning. After you’ve named it and saved it, you need to upload it to your “public_html” folder inside your ftp. It may be your “www” folder depending on your host.
Step Four – Make Sure you Test it!
The last thing you need to do is to make sure you test that it’s working properly. More than once I’ve setup a 301 redirect and didn’t check it only to find out hours later that I’ve been sending costly traffic to something that wasn’t even working correctly! Make sure you test it, even once you get use to doing it all the time, still check it every single time…get in the habit of checking it all the time now when you first start using it!
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Interesting and informative post.
But do you really think that this will help your Google QS? This just looks like a b-slap waiting to happen.
a g-slap…get it straight son!
lol. Pardon me.
Another possibility, for those who do not have htaccess enabled, is just to create an index.php with this:
Uh, none of my code showed up
I look silly 
header(“Location: http://www.target.com“, true, 301); should do the trick.
So how does this get you around Quality Score?
How could this not get slapped silly?
how is setting up a 301 Redirect beat Adwords QS?
What I mean is for a short term. I don’t believe it will help your quality score, I just meant it was better than simply direct linking to an affiliate URL and putting that URL in your ad.
I do believe it would get a better quality score than direct linking by itself and that’s what I meant by the statement I made.
But you are all very correct, it is still, in my opinion, only to be used for a very short period of time to simply test!
Unfortunately, your ads will be disaproved for “Incorrect Display URL”. This method is not allowed by Google AdWords, and other PPC search engines also don’t like it.
Also, you will get QS of the affiliateurl.com, it’s the same as for direct linking without your own domain.
Actually 301 redirects are not disliked by search engines, meta refreshes are, but 301 redirects were created for the purpose of redirecting if need be.
While you may get the same QS as if you just direct linked, there are still several advantages to using this method as it allows you to quickly switch out offers as well as some other nice tricks.
Also it’s nice to be able to control the display URL unlike direct linking where you have to use the URL of the offer your promoting.
Are you saying to show your display URL as the purchased domain name? I thought that wouldn’t work because Google follows the redirects anyway and flags it that the landing page isn’t the same URL as the display URL.
Hey Nate, you can use it as the display URL, and it is true that you aren’t technically allowed to do this according to Google Adwords Guidelines, in fact, you not allowed to use any type of redirect where you simply direct link to an offer.
I should of said this in the post, however, I was planning on doing a follow up post where I explained the benefits and disadvantages of using each method, whether it’s simply direct linking or it’s direct linking with a domain.
Ok, good to know. I’m trying it out on one ad for the moment, just as a test. It shouldn’t get you banned, I’m guessing. But it should probably get found out in a short amount of time and then the ad disallowed at least. So, yea, it’s a very short term test, and if you do it a lot, I’m sure Google will send you a nasty threatening note, especially if you make it a habit.
But, on the other side, direct linking to the offer isn’t necessarily a bad thing, nor is it against their TOS. It’s just not a viable long term thing because many new affiliates direct link to the same offer and then you’re running competing display urls, which means you’ll see much less impressions… hence the reason for making your own landing pages, which have their own pluses and minuses that you have to be aware of.
Ah, the catch 22’s.
Thanks for clarifying Derek.
I prefer not to go against the Google rules. Most of the targeted traffic is referred by google and if get banned it will drive our site to way deep.
That’s your choice, however, I’ve yet to hear of anyone getting banned for doing this. I’ve been doing it for years without any problems. Of course, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
one opportunity more for people not having ht access enabled willbe making an index php.
You are right Silvia and I actually did a post here on CC before on how to do a php redirect. The only problem with a php redirect is if someone comes to your site other than with the name of the file you have it will not redirect them.
FYI…You can’t do a redirect that way or with a .php file. Google disapproves the ads since they don’t match the actual landing page. I’ve tested this recently.
This isn’t true, I’ve been using this method for years and have never had a problem.
You are correct that they technically don’t allow this, in fact, in their TOS they forbid it, however, you can still do it, short term that is.
If you do it more than a week your probably looking at getting slapped.
You are right it is the most optimal mode to apply .htaccess file with mode_rewrite or 301 redirect with SEO link popularity. But there is one more way to redirect -to use tag with refresh.
How does the 301 redirect compare to doing a Frame Redirect, if the purpose is to test many offers in an initial stage, before investing more time to Fine Tune & develop a campaign?
I am trying to determine what method to use when I don’t have too much time but need to test several offers a day. Also, I don’t want to purchase one domain name for one offer I test. What do you recommend?
Cheers….
The problem with Frame Redirect (I think your talking about iframes and just framing the offer in) is that most advertisers do not allow this. So that’s the main reason I don’t recommend iframing an offer. So you’d have to check with your AM to see if it’s allowed first of all.
Also, if you want to do this business and your serious about it, get over spending 9 bucks on a domain name (7 if you find coupons) and buy one for each different niche. You don’t need one for each offer, but you do need a different one for each niche.
It’s a very small investment for a large return once you hit a goldmine.
Hey Derek,
Not saying I don’t believe you but I run PPC ads for myself and clients all day and while the redirected domain used to work for me all the time… then a few days… it doesn’t work at all now. What are you doing to get those ads live? Whether I use adwords editor or the web console, if my display url doesn’t match that final LP domain that ad never goes live to start with.
Hey Matt, I’ve never had a problem personally getting the ad to go live using that method, again it only works for a few days to a week like you said, but still it has always worked for me.
Maybe this is because of my “account quality score” as some people like to call it, but I also know others that still use this method and use it successfully.
It almost sounds like your account is having to be manually approved for every ad, which means you possibly have had your account flagged for some other reason. Have you tried it across different accounts and not seen it work?