Instead of having all banners and links linked directly to a poker room or casino if i would link them to a page say named xyz poker on my site then have that page 301 to my affiliate link
Would this work , Help or hurt .
i would think this would help as it would cut down on outgoing links , just wondering if the 301 would mess up the aff link and it would not track properly
Yes it will work. That is what I do on my site. I have all links pointing to a page that doesn't exist, which I 301 to my affiliate link. The other benefit of this is if you need to update your affiliate links you can do it simply by changing the code in your .htaccess file. The only downside I see to this, sometimes the redirects can be slow (even on a fast server).
(I should have said "may not track" since I suppose there can be a way to do it, but a standard 301 to them breaks the "?" in the URL, and they won't track it.)
I have never had a problem with them. My links are still tracking properly there. I don't see why it would be a problem because the redirect is no different then clicking on a link with an affiliate code in it.
I just tested Absolute again and it shows the affiliate tracking URL once the Absolute link loads. Do you have further information about this? Can you please explain why you think it won't work?