Affiliate networks like CJ use 302 redirects, even though they know that blocks the flow of PageRank to the merchant. And that's not going to change anytime soon -- if ever -- because the networks' loyalty is to the affiliates, not to the merchants. If merchants profited from affiliate links in terms of rankings improvements, the affiliates would not be happy. There would be mass revolt and a bunch of affiliates would leave the network. Luckily, for you merchants, there are a couple workarounds you could utilize to capture some link juice from your affiliates...

1. Bring your affiliate program in-house and utilize an affiliate tracking solution that uses 301 redirects and therefore passes PageRank. Here's a blog post of mine about this: Affiliate Programs That Pass Link Gain (PageRank). Amazon.com is one such merchant with an in-house affiliate program -- and it serves up 301s to capture PageRank from their "associates" (affiliates).
2. and/or, simply require your affiliates to post a disclosure statement on their Legal Notices page (or their About page if they don't have a Legal Notices page) stating that they are an affiliate of the merchant and that neither party is an agent, partner, joint venturer, franchisor, franchisee, employer or employee of the other. And of course require that the affiliate include a straight link to the merchant in that statement. Pretty sly, eh! And the great thing about a Legal Notices page is that it is typically linked site-wide and has very few other links on it compared to other pages, so your link gets a bigger slice of the PageRank that is divvied up among the links!

Bear in mind that affiliates can always add rel=nofollow to any and all links to the merchant, so the power still rests with the affiliates.

I blogged last month about Wikipedia and SEO. There are a number of considerations when making edits, creating entries, and passing the "Notability" test -- practices to avoid so you don't run afoul of their guidelines and so on.

Well folks, the game has changed. Wikipedia just instituted nofollows on all external links. This had already been in place for a while on some of their sister sites. This effectively removes a lot of the incentive to contribute to Wikipedia. Or does it? It does if your end goal is receiving PageRank to your own sites. But not if your goals are traffic (a top ranking Wikipedia page that links to you will still drive plenty of direct clickthrough traffic your way), credibility (companies with entries give the impression of being bigger and more legitimate), and reputation management (because a favorable Wikipedia entry for your company will probably occupy a spot in the top 10 in the SERPs for searches on your company name).

So are legitimate SEOs going to give up on contributing to Wikipedia? I hope not -- at least for the ones who are adding value to Wikipedia. I think we'd all like the spammers to leave (I certainly would!), and I know that is Jimbo Wales' intention, but I doubt that's what will transpire. Nofollowing blog comments didn't drive the spammers away; I can't see it working for Wikipedia. Especially as long as Wikipedia holds the top spot for important keywords such as "marketing" in Google. (sigh!)

More discussion on this development at SEOMoz.