What is Affiliate Link Cloaking: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!

If you are an affiliate marketer, then I will tell you about What is Affiliate Link Cloaking, so if you want to know about it, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about this, so let’s start.

As you all know, Affiliate Marketing is a very Complicate Market, that is why it is very important to understand it, without it we cannot earn money well. Affiliate Link Cloaking is also a type of this, which all Affiliate Marketers should use.

That’s why I thought that the new affiliate marketer should be told about Affiliate Link Cloaking, what are the benefits of Affiliate Link Cloaking.

Affiliate Link Cloaking

So let’s get complete information about What is Affiliate Link Cloaking without wasting time, so let’s start.

What is Affiliate Link Cloaking?

Affiliate Link Cloaking is such away, with the help of which we can shorten any of our URLs, and hide it from Google. If you are doing Affiliate Marketing, then you must know that Google does not like Affiliate Link at all. That is why we cannot index it, otherwise, google gives us a penalty. But if you do not index, then both traffic and sales will not be available, then what is the benefit of doing affiliate marketing?

The point is absolutely right, we also have to hide our affiliate link from Google, and also share it, that too without penalty. That’s why we have to use Affiliate Link Cloaking. Now you must have come to know why should I cloak my affiliate links?

Is Cloaking illegal?

Many people think that doing Link Cloaking is Illegal but this thing is absolutely wrong. We all should use it, it also protects us from spammers, so how did it become illegal?

Can you cloak amazon affiliate links?

Whether we are associated with any kind of Affiliate Program, we should use Affiliate Link Cloaking. We can also cloak the link of Amazon affiliates.

Are affiliate links bad for SEO?

The answer is yes and no? If you do not no-follow your Affiliate Link, then it proves to be very wrong from the point of view of SEO. And Google drops your position, but if you make an affiliate link no-follow with the help of a link cloaking plugin, then it will not have any bad effect on your SEO.

How do I cloak affiliate links in WordPress?

If you are a WordPress user, then for this you can very easily clock your affiliate link. For this, you get many free and paid plugins, which help in affiliate link cloaking in your WordPress blog.

Benefits of Link Cloaking?

There are many benefits of link cloaking, which are as follows.

1. Link Trust

Nowadays a lot of people are doing Affiliate Marketing, that’s why people have become very smart. This question must come to your mind, why should people click on your Affiliate Link instead of going to that site directly?

Whenever we enter any Affiliate Link, its URL is very long, in which there are many numbers and characters too, do you like such URL? It does not come at all, that is why if you use Affiliate Link Cloaking, then you can make your Affiliate Link user-friendly, which will increase your CTR very much.

Example:-

Here I am promoting Here I am promoting a tourist bag, whose link is https://amzn.to/3eAI1hknM. But looking at this link, nothing is understood, about who this link is. Same if I put the same link using Link Cloaking then it will show something like this oflox.com/go/american-Tourister-bag. This URL shows that it is about a tourist bag.

Using the link in this way leads to more clicks on your link, which leads to more sales of your affiliate products.

2. Loss of commission

Like we talked about earlier, nowadays Spammer has increased a lot, which harms you. It eats the fruits of your hard work by replacing your Affiliate Link through malware.

Apart from this, whenever we share any products, we have our Affiliate Id shown in it, so that people know that it is an Affiliate Link, in this way some people do not buy from our link, then some people do not buy from our link. removes the id. There is only one way to avoid all these things, which is Affiliate Link Cloaking.

3. Link Management

If you have created an Affiliate Marketing Blog, then it is obvious that you will have too many Affiliate Links, and it is very difficult to manage all of them together. Apart from this, it also takes a lot of time, yet you do not even know whether all your affiliate links are working properly or not? That is why you should use Affiliate Link Cloaking Plugin, which helps you a lot in doing all this work.

4. Link Tracking

If you use Affiliate Link in most of the posts on your blog and promote more than one product, then you will not know which is your product, which earns more, gets more clicks.

That is why if you do Affiliate Link Cloaking with the help of WordPress Plugins, then you can see in your Dashboard itself, which of your products get more clicks, and which products have more EPC.

5. CTR (Click-through rate)

As we have already told you, by doing Link Cloaking, you can create a custom URL, which is user-friendly, by looking at which you can know what it is about. By doing this, visitors click more on your link, which increases your CTR.

6. Ad Blockers

Nowadays, most people have Ad Blockers in their Smartphone or Desktop Browser, which work to block all types of ads, in this case, your Affiliate Link will also be blocked, which will have an effect on your earnings. For this not to happen, you should use Affiliate Link Cloaking which protects your link from the eyes of AdBlockers.

Affiliate Link Cloaking WordPress plugin!

There are 2 ways to cloak your affiliate link.

  • Affiliate links without any Plugins
  • Affiliate links with plugins

You can do link cloaking even without plugins by adding some code to your .htaccess, but in this, you can only no-follow your link. In this way, you will not get any more benefits than you get from plugins. For this reason, use plugins as far as possible. For this, we are going to talk about 2 Free Affiliate Link Cloaking Plugins.

We have already explained in detail about 7 Free Affiliate Plugins for WordPress, in which you will get information about free affiliate marketing plugins and also why you should use Affiliate plugins.

1. Thirsty Affiliates

Thirsty Affiliates

Thirsty Affiliates is a very popular WordPress Affiliate Plugin which is very useful in managing your Affiliate Link. Let’s see about some of its features.

  1. With the help of its Link Cloaking, you can shorten Affiliate Link.
  2. Keyword linking: It reviews your content and adds an Automatic Affiliate Link to your keywords. (Comes in Paid Version)
  3. Geolocation links: This is useful in tracking the location of visitors and redirecting them according to the country.
  4. Automatic 404 Checker: It checks whether all your Affiliate Link is working properly or not, if any Broken Link is found then it Automatically fixes this. (Comes in Paid Version)
  5. Event monitoring: It tracks your traffic through Google Analytics. It is absolutely free which you can use.

If you want to use its Advance Features, then you will have to pay $ 49 per year for this, but there is no need because all your work is done for free. These Affiliate Plugins are best for those people who are new to Affiliate Marketing and have absolutely no knowledge of coding.

2. Pretty Links

Pretty Links

Pretty Links is a link management tool, which is very useful for Affiliate Marketers and Bloggers. Let’s see about its features.

  1. User-friendly interface: Its interface is very easy and you can install setup in one click.
  2. All-in-one link management: Here you can manage all the affiliate links on your blog, email, and social platform in one place.
  3. Real-time reporting: With the help of this, you can see the statistics of link views, clicks, and purchases in detail.
  4. Multiple link redirection techniques: With the help of this you can redirect all the links simultaneously.

These plugins are also absolutely free and if you want its advanced features then you will have to pay $ 49 every year.

Conclusion!

If you have read this article completely, then you must have understood what is Affiliate Link Cloaking, and what are its benefits? If you are doing Affiliate Marketing then you must use Link cloaking. And now if you want, you can also read this article.

Read also:)

So hope that you have liked our article What is Affiliate Link Cloaking. And if you still have any questions and suggestions related to this, then you can tell us in the comment box below, thank you very much for reading this article.