How important are datafeeds?

[Julia]

Hey everyone,

I was just wondering how many of you affiliates out there choose to work only with merchants that offer datafeeds?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Julia,

I think most product based affiliates prefer merchants with feeds IF the affiliate knows how to work with feed. I'd be curious to hear from affiliates too.

What do you say?

[StephenR]

That's one of the first things I look for before signing up with a program nowadays. With the right datafeed programming you're offered MUCH more options to maximize your profits while distinctly seperating yourself from your fellow affiliates.

[Julia]

Thanks for your replies, I feel that datafeeds are a pretty important aspect of running an affiliate program and I try to set them up for my affiliates whenever possible.

[Rugman.com]

I agree completely. I try DESPERATELY to have my datafeeds updated weekly. On rare occassion, of course I fall down by a day or two, but on the whole, I figure it will make more money for us and more commission for the partners if the data we provide is current.

[spider ninja]

Data feeds are lots of fun, but I don't think they are great for SEO. If you have a site with traffic and want to easily create hundreds of pages using a few lines of code to entice your existing users, data feeds are the way to go.

[StephenR]

When properly formatted datafeeds can be VERY SEO friendly.

[DreamPrints]

Originally Posted by StephenR

When properly formatted datafeeds can be VERY SEO friendly.

And what do you mean by "properly formatted". I am curious as I am a merchant providing free datafeed and want my affiliates to be satisfied. I am also interested that it would be SEO friendly, so please explaine.

Sincerely,

[spider ninja]

Originally Posted by StephenR

When properly formatted datafeeds can be VERY SEO friendly.

Hi StephenR, I should rephrase that and say my own experiences with datafeeds for SEO were a dud. I once did an Amazon web services site that got 80k pages indexed in google. The end result was up to 40k hits a day from search engine spiders, but not much real live surfer traffic.

But I have hear other people have had more luck, I think you need to be very creative in how you mix data feed content with other stuff on your site.

[DataFeedFile]

DataFeed add content to your web site and when it is done correctly and tastefully it can increase the functionality of your site also.

SEO is just an added benefit. Relying on datafeed content to get more hits from search engines is like spamming the internet, because 1000 other affiliates will have the same idea.

Don't get me wrong I believe in SEO efforts, but I just believe datafeed file content is not good content.

Good content is whatever your web site specialize in. For example if you are an expert in Pets and you have a website about Pets then your REAL content should article about Pets. Trick & tips about Pets. Maybe a Pet training tutorial.

Then you can add datafeed files from PetCo & PetSmart.

I am rambling too much... hope it makes sense.