Have you ever hesitated before clicking a link, unsure of where it might lead?
Link cloaking starts here. This technique conceals a link’s true destination, displaying a neater, friendlier URL in the browser instead. But it’s not just about appearances; a cloaked link also plays a crucial role in enhancing security, ensuring accuracy, and enhancing user confidence.
This guide provides everything you need to know about link cloaking, including its benefits, easy methods, and best practices. From shortening links to staying transparent and tracking clicks, we’ll walk you through it all.
What is link cloaking?
Link cloaking, link disguising, or link masking is a technique used to hide the actual destination URL of a link while presenting a different, more user-friendly link to visitors.
This is often done for various reasons, including affiliate marketing, branding, tracking, and improving the appearance of links. By cloaking a link, you can make it appear cleaner and more trustworthy, as well as monitor click-through rates and other metrics.
Note: Link cloaking can sometimes be misused for deceptive or malicious purposes; therefore, it’s essential to use it responsibly and transparently.
Affiliate link cloaking: What does it mean?
Affiliate link cloaking refers to the practice of concealing or disguising affiliate links to make them appear more user-friendly and appealing.
Affiliate marketing involves promoting products or services through unique affiliate links, and when a user clicks on such a link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission.
However, these affiliate links can often be long, complex, and not very attractive. To address this, affiliate marketers use a link cloaking tool to create links that are shorter, cleaner, and more customized.
Purpose of cloaking affiliate links
There are several benefits of cloaking affiliate links. To name a few:
Makes affiliate links blend seamlessly into the content
Provides a branded and professional appearance
Increases the likelihood of user clicks
Enables tracking of click-through rates
Allows access to analytics for measuring campaign effectiveness
Link cloaking vs. link shortening: What’s the difference?
Here’s a quick comparison to help you understand the difference between link cloaking and link shortening:
Hide affiliate URLs and IDs: Link cloaking masks long, messy affiliate links and referral IDs, making your links look clean and click-worthy. This is especially helpful for Amazon affiliate links.
Use branded, clickable URLs: Replace generic links with short, branded URLs using your own domain. It builds trust and can significantly boost your click-through rate.
Maximize marketing ROI
by transforming ordinary URLs into branded short links that convert.
Try Replug for free
Keep links flexible: Need to change where a link goes after it’s been shared? No problem. Cloaking lets you change the destination URL without touching the short link.
Improve email link deliverability: Affiliate links in emails can trigger spam filters. Cloaking helps your links look clean and safe, improving inbox placement and engagement.
Add retargeting and CTA features: With tools like Replug, you can add retargeting pixels, CTA buttons, and other enhancements; perfect for capturing and converting more users.
Track link performance: Cloaked links double as tracking links, giving you detailed analytics on every click; from location and device to time and campaign performance.
To use Replug for link masking, follow these steps:
Step 1: Sign in to Replug or create an account for a free 14-day trial.
Step 2: Paste the original URL you want to shorten in the bar under “Quickly Shorten your link”
Step 3: You’ll be led to a pop-up where you can connect your custom domain and edit the URL slug of the original link. Here you can also add UTM parameters behind your link (optional).
Step 4: Enable link cloaking. This ensures that your custom, branded URL remains visible in the browser’s address bar
Step 6: Once done, click the “Save Shortened Link” button. Your cloaked URL is now ready to share across all platforms.
Monitor cloaked link analytics with Replug
Replug offers valuable insights such as click-through rates and geotargeting data related to the users interacting with your cloaked links.
By utilizing this data, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of how your links are performing. This information helps you gauge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, identify trends, and make informed decisions for optimizing your strategies.
Whether you want to track engagement, reach the right audience, or optimize your campaigns, Replug’s analytics give you the insights to fine-tune your strategy and hit your goals.
A complete link management solution
for marketing professionals & agencies.
Try Replug for free
Conclusion
Link cloaking helps you clean up messy URLs, protect affiliate commissions, and build trust with branded links. When used transparently, it’s a powerful way to improve link performance, track engagement, and manage where your traffic goes.
Whether you’re in affiliate marketing or simply want more control over your links, cloaking is a tactic worth using.
FAQs about link cloaking
How does link cloaking work?
Cloaked link often uses technologies like iFrames to display the destination URL within a webpage, while showing a different link to users.
Is link cloaking ethical?
Link cloaking itself is neutral, but its ethical use is crucial. Transparently informing users about cloaked links, especially in affiliate marketing, is essential.
Are cloaked links trackable?
Yes, many cloaking methods allow you to track click-through rates and other analytics to measure the performance of your links.
Can I retarget users with cloaked links?
Yes, some cloaking tools let you add retargeting or remarketing tags to cloaked pages, enabling you to show ads to users who clicked but didn’t convert.
You’ve probably come across those long, clunky affiliate URLs with tracking IDs, UTM parameters, and numbers that look like they came from a robot. Not exactly something you’d want to click, let alone share.
Link cloaking fixes that.
It’s a method that hides the original destination URL behind a cleaner, shorter one, often with your own domain. Unlike a standard redirect, the cloaked link stays visible in the browser’s address bar even after the page loads.
So instead of something like this:
You see this in your browser:
The user lands on the affiliate site, but all they see is your branded link. That’s URL masking, also called link cloaking or link disguising.
How does link disguising work?
Most link cloaking tools use an iFrame to load the destination page inside your branded one. It’s like placing the real page in a wrapper; your wrapper.
This means:
The user stays on your domain
The destination loads inside it
The original link is hidden
That’s why it’s a go-to move in affiliate marketing. It gives you more control, cleaner links, and keeps your commissions safe.
Link cloaking isn’t without its critics. On some platforms, it can seem deceptive, especially if it’s used to hide important information or mislead users. If you’re going to cloak links, do it transparently. Keep your audience’s trust by being clear about where the link leads.
That’s why tools like Replug are built with transparency in mind. You can cloak your links without compromising trust, using branded URLs, clear slugs, and built-in analytics to show exactly how your links are performing.
Boost ROI with branded URLs!
Enhance your marketing campaigns by creating shareable, trackable, and fully multi-purpose
customizable branded URLs.
Enable deep linking, retargeting pixels, CTA buttons, A/B testing, and UTM parameters to track performance and optimize engagement.
Step 4: Enable link cloaking
Toggle on Link Cloaking to ensure your branded link stays visible in the browser’s address bar, not the original URL. This keeps your links clean, click-worthy, and aligned with your brand.
Step 5: Save and share
Click Save Shortened Link, and you’re good to go. Share your new cloaked URL anywhere you want: social posts, emails, bios, ads; wherever you want clean, trackable links.
Maximize marketing ROI
by transforming ordinary URLs into branded short links that convert.
Try Replug for free
Conclusion
Link cloaking isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about trust, control, and smarter affiliate marketing. When used transparently, it can protect your commissions, boost clicks, and elevate your brand presence. Tools like Replug make it easy to mask links while keeping everything above board. So go ahead! Clean up those messy URLs and give your links the makeover they deserve.
FAQs on how to cloak a link?
How does link cloaking work?
Link cloaking uses an iFrame to load the destination page while keeping your branded or shortened URL visible in the browser’s address bar. This technique hides the original URL, which is a major advantage for affiliate marketers.
What is the best tool for link cloaking?
One of the best tools for cloaking links is Replug. It offers easy link customization, tracking, and branding features to enhance link performance.
Can I use my own domain for cloaked links?
Yes, absolutely. Most link cloaking tools, including Replug, allow you to use a custom domain to create vanity URLs. This makes your links look cleaner, more on-brand, and easier to trust.
Why do some websites not allow cloaking?
Some websites actively block iFrame loading through security headers like X-Frame-Options. If a site has this restriction (for example, Apple), link cloaking won’t work. Tools like Replug will alert you if a destination link can’t be cloaked.
Can I add retargeting pixels or tracking scripts to cloaked links?
Yes. With affiliate link cloaking, you can still apply Facebook Pixel, Google Tag Manager, and other retargeting pixels to track user behavior and optimize your campaigns.
Why is my cloaked link getting flagged or marked as spam?
In some cases, cloaked links may be flagged by spam filters, especially if they hide the final destination or appear misleading. Some platforms and email providers treat aggressive URL masking with caution. To avoid this, always use link cloaking ethically and transparently.
What are the benefits of link cloaking?
Link cloaking helps you:
Make long affiliate URLs (like Amazon links) look clean and branded
Cloaked links loaded in iFrames aren’t crawled like standard hyperlinks, so they don’t typically pass SEO value. If SEO is your goal, use traditional linking strategies. But if your focus is affiliate conversion tracking, branding, and clean presentation, link cloaking does the job well.
Affiliate decloaking isn’t just a fancy term; it’s the key to building trust with your audience. Picture this: you’re browsing the web and stumble upon an intriguing link. But wait, where does it lead? That’s where decloaking comes in.
By lifting the veil on those affiliate links, you’re showing your audience you have nothing to hide. It’s about being upfront, honest, and, ultimately, more persuasive.
This guide will explore why affiliate decloaking matters and how it can supercharge your marketing efforts. So, let’s dive in!
All you should know about affiliate cloaking and decloaking
To understand the concept of decloaking in affiliate marketing, it’s crucial to first know its counterpart: affiliate cloaking. Both techniques revolve around manipulating URLs, but they have distinct purposes and outcomes.
What is affiliate cloaking?
Affiliate cloaking is when a marketer disguises or hides the actual destination URL of an affiliate link. Because affiliate links are created by sales commission tools, their destinations might seem weird. So, affiliate cloaking is like putting a mask on the link to make it look different from where it leads. People often do this to make links appear cleaner or to track clicks without revealing the true destination.
What is affiliate decloaking?
On the flip side, affiliate decloaking is the process of removing the disguise from a cloaked affiliate link to reveal its true destination URL. It’s all about transparency and honesty. Decloaking shows your audience exactly where they’ll end up if they click the link.
What’s the difference between the two?
Here’s a quick table to show you some major differences between cloaking and decloaking.
Aspect
Cloaking
Decloaking
Purpose
Hides the destination URL
Reveals the destination URL
Use
Aesthetic purposes, tracking, redirects
Transparency, building trust
Outcome
Link looks cleaner but conceals its target
Audience knows exactly where they’ll go
Impact on trust
May reduce trust if discovered
Increases trust and credibility
Understanding cloaking and decloaking in affiliate marketing
As we have stated before, Cloaking refers to hiding the true destination of an affiliate link from users. Marketers use this technique to conceal where a link leads by altering the URL or redirecting.
SEO/PPC affiliates might cloak links to hide non-compliant content from brands and avoid penalties. While cloaking may boost short-term results, it risks severe consequences like affiliate bans or legal issues if discovered.
Legal implications: Cloaking can have legal consequences, mainly if it violates regulations like the FTC’s affiliate disclosure rules. If cloaking is used to deceive consumers or hide affiliate relationships, marketers could face fines or other penalties.
Decloaking reverses cloaking to enhance link transparency and improve affiliate performance. Tools like BluePear’s decloaking service simulate real traffic from multiple IPs and countries, fully exposing landing pages, which builds trust and transparency in affiliate marketing.
A complete link management solution
for marketing professionals & agencies.
Try Replug for free
How does affiliate decloaking work?
Here’s how it typically works:
Identifying cloaked links:
First, you need to identify the cloaked affiliate links you want to decloak. These links often appear shortened or obfuscated, making it difficult to determine their true destination.
Extracting the destination URL:
Once you’ve identified a cloaked link, you’ll need to extract the destination URL hidden within it. This might involve using online tools or browser extensions designed to reveal the underlying URL of shortened or cloaked links.
Displaying the destination URL:
Once you’ve extracted the destination URL, you can then display it to your audience. This could be done by simply replacing the cloaked link with the revealed destination URL in your content or by providing additional information alongside the link to ensure transparency.
Ensuring transparency:
The key to effective affiliate decloaking is transparency. By revealing the true destination URL to your audience, you’re providing them with the information they need to make informed decisions about whether to click on the link.
Maintaining compliance:
It’s important to ensure that your decloaking practices comply with any relevant laws or regulations, as well as the terms of service of the affiliate programs you’re participating in. This may include obtaining consent from users before redirecting them to affiliate links and providing clear disclosures about your affiliate relationships.
A complete link management solution
for marketing professionals & agencies.
Try Replug for free
Why should affiliates decloak links?
Affiliates should decloak links for several important reasons:
Transparency and trust: Decloaking links promotes transparency by revealing the true destination URL to users. This honesty builds trust with the audience, as they know exactly where they’ll be directed when clicking on the link.
Credibility: Decloaking links enhance the credibility of the affiliate marketer. It demonstrates integrity and accountability, showing that the marketer is not trying to deceive or manipulate their audience.
Compliance: Decloaking ensures compliance with regulations and affiliate program terms. Some programs require affiliates to disclose their affiliate status and provide clear information about linked destinations.
User experience: Decloaking improves the user experience by providing clarity and reducing confusion. Users appreciate knowing where a link leads before clicking, which can lead to higher engagement and conversions.
Long-term success: Building trust and credibility through decloaking contributes to long-term success in affiliate marketing. It fosters positive relationships with the audience and encourages repeat visits and referrals.
A complete link management solution
for marketing professionals & agencies.
Try Replug for free
A practical examples of cloaking and decloaking in affiliate marketing
A fitness blogger named Sarah promotes a protein powder through her affiliate link. To make the link cleaner and more visually appealing, she cloaks it using a URL shortener, so instead of showing
it appears as
This is cloaking—it hides the original affiliate URL, making it look more professional while also allowing Sarah to track clicks.
Replug affiliate program: Unlock passive income opportunities
Are you ready to take your affiliate marketing efforts to the next level? Consider joining the Replug Affiliate Program to unlock passive income opportunities while promoting a powerful link management tool to your network.
Why Replug?
Replug offers a comprehensive link management solution designed to streamline your affiliate marketing efforts and maximize your conversions. With features like branded links, call-to-action overlays, and detailed analytics, Replug empowers marketers to optimize their links and drive more traffic to their affiliate offers.
Earn 30% recurring commissions
As a Replug affiliate partner, you’ll earn an impressive 30% recurring commission for every new customer you refer to Replug. This means you’ll continue to earn commissions for the lifetime of each customer you bring on board, providing you with a steady stream of passive income.
Easy sign-up and promotion
Getting started with the Replug Affiliate Program is quick and easy. Simply sign up for the program, receive your unique referral link, and start promoting Replug to your audience through various channels such as social media, email marketing, or your website. Monitor your progress and success directly from your affiliate dashboard.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to earn passive income while promoting a valuable tool to your audience. Join the Replug Affiliate Program today and start monetizing your affiliate marketing efforts like never before.
A complete link management solution
for marketing professionals & agencies.
Try Replug for free
FAQs on affiliate decloaking
Is affiliate cloaking legal?
While affiliate cloaking itself is not illegal, its ethical implications depend on how it’s used. Cloaking with the intent to deceive or manipulate users can violate laws and regulations, as well as the terms of service of affiliate programs.
What are the risks of using cloaked affiliate links?
Risks associated with cloaked affiliate links include reduced trust and credibility with your audience, potential violations of affiliate program terms, and penalties from search engines if detected.
How can I decloak affiliate links?
Various methods exist to decloak affiliate links, including using online tools or browser extensions designed to reveal the underlying URL of shortened or cloaked links.
Do I need to decloak all my affiliate links?
While it’s not mandatory, decloaking all your affiliate links can help establish transparency and trust with your audience. Consider decloaking links where transparency is crucial or required by regulations or affiliate program terms.
Affiliate Link Cloaking is a process of replacing the long and clunky affiliate product links with short links that trackable links and point visitors to the same URL destination, but are trustworthy and brandable.
Expert affiliate marketers use affiliate link cloaking to make their affiliate product links look more trustable. You might be wondering how to get your hands on those short links. So let me briefly explain affiliate link cloaking, and then we will touch on more relevant topics you should know about.
Shall we?
Bloggers and marketers use affiliate link cloaking because visitors are hesitant toward longs and clunky product URLs. Most experts try to simplify the URLs, CTAs, and navigation so that readers feel safe.
Perhaps, people are skeptical about long URLs because scammers use several protocols in the URLs or page contents that lead to data theft or privacy issues.
Most website owners want to track the clickability on their site pages to analyze their on-page SEO strategies and understand the content performance through user behavior.
Anyway, affiliate link cloaking allows affiliate marketers and bloggers to minimize the complexity in the website navigation and provide a better user experience.
Should You Cloak Your Affiliate Links?
If you have ever thought about whether or not you should cloak your affiliate links, then this section might convince you to start paying close attention to affiliate link cloaking.
I like cloaking affiliate links because I don’t want to scare off readers – some visitors hover over the links and when they see the long, clunky URLs, they avoid clicking on those links.
Cloaking affiliate links doesn’t mean you want to hide your association with the brands. But instead, it makes readers feel safe when the links seem short and sweet.
Below is a video that will make you understand the importance and benefits of affiliate links.
Can You Make a Living Off of Affiliate Marketing?
The answer is yes; you can make a living off of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a lucrative business model if done right. The only caveat is that you must understand how it works.
Even though most affiliate marketers fail to make a significant amount of money with affiliate marketing, it’s still one of the most popular ways to earn money online.
When content creators put out valuable content to solve the audiences’ problems and mention the links to the products or services they have been using, the audience trusts them with their recommendations.
The best part is that bloggers, YouTubers, and TikTokers make money off of affiliate marketing the same way – they build a fan base, provide value to earn trust, and make money by recommending products.
Since you have some idea of how link cloaking works, it’s important to discuss the fundamental steps of link cloaking.
i. Figure Out the Purpose of URL Shortening
Before you jump on cloaking random links on your blog just because you have seen influencers do this, it’s important to understand why you need to do this. A lot of bloggers blindly follow what experts are doing without having a plan in mind.
Most influencers and pro-bloggers cloak links because they don’t want messy links on their blogs. However, there are other reasons for cloaking links. For instance, short URLs or cloaked links also help in tracking clicks on those links. So figure out why you need to cloak links first.
ii. Identify the Website URLs to Trim Down
It’d be unfair if you start shortening the random URLs on your blog or website. Affiliate marketers and bloggers usually cloak affiliate product links to make them look decent. The reason is that affiliate product links are long and clunky, so cloaking them with a URL shortening tool makes them look nice.
You might not want to shorten the post or page URLs on your blog. Just stick to the affiliate product links when trimming the long URLs.
iii. Choose the Best URL Shortener
Cloaking links isn’t possible without an excellent URL shortener. Even though the core purpose of a link cloaking tool is to make links shorter and cleaner, it’ll be a bonus if any URL shortener provides additional features.
The value-added feature that you may want to look out for in a URL shortener or cloaking tool is click tracking. It’s vital to find out where visitors are clicking on your blog when it comes to affiliate marketing.
iv. Replace the Long URLs with Short Ones
Once you have shortened the long and clunky URLs on your blog using an external URL shortener or a WordPress plugin, the next up is the replacement of the long URLs with shorter ones.
It shouldn’t take so long if you’re using a tool like Lasso. However, you can always replace the links manually.
How to Cloak Links Using URL Shorteners?
If you’re curious about how to cloak affiliate or e-commerce products on your blog or website, then there are several tools to cloak links that might come in handy.
One of the methods to cloak links on a blog or a website is by using a link cloaking WordPress plugin.
However, it’s only possible when you’re using the WordPress open-source program.
I use Replug for URL shortening. It’s a top-notch URL shortener that could connect with custom domains for creating branded short URLs. Plus, it has some of the best features, such as click tracking, integrations, bio link, UTM codes, retargeting, and more.
Let me show you how Replug works.
Go to the Replug website and log in to your account.
Once you’re in the dashboard, you’ll see the option called “Create Quick Replug Link” – this is where you could shorten the URLs.
However, I’d highly recommend checking out a few of our articles on how to use branded URLs or the benefits of using the short branded URLs, etc.
Once you’re logged in to your Replug account, you’ll see the URL shortening section right at the top of the dashboard. All you need is to choose a campaign name and insert the URL you want to shorten.
Once you select the campaign name and paste the long URL to shorten it and proceed with it by clicking on the “create” button, a popup will be prompted with a form to fill out about the short URL.
Fill out the form and you’re all set.
Now you have generated a short URL using Replug URL shortener.
You could later check out the Analytics section to analyze the clickability of the short URLs.
There are several reasons why you should cloak affiliate links, so allow me to share them with you.
Let’s take a look:
i. Clean Link Structure
Let’s admit that when you have short URLs instead of long ones, they look better. One of the aspects of URLs most people ignore is the link structure. If your affiliate link has a bunch of UTM codes, tracking codes, and serial numbers, people won’t trust your links, and rightly so.
So one of the biggest perks of cloaking affiliate links is that you clean up the link structure, which plays a vital role in improving the conversion rate.
ii. Clicks Tracking
You may or may not be properly tracking the affiliate conversion. Most bloggers and affiliate marketers rely on the merchants’ tracking – whatever the seller is using for affiliate sales tracking, and you have to rely on that.
However, when you’re using cloaked affiliate links, you have some control over click tracking. You know how many clicks have been recorded in your URL tracking system and you could match the number with your affiliate statistics. It’d help you figure out how accurate your affiliate dashboard is or enable you to find any discrepancies in the affiliate dashboard tool.
iii. Nofollow Affiliate Links
Most beginner affiliate marketers don’t even know that they should nofollow every affiliate link and most of them let the link juice pass to the merchant sites. When you let the link juice pass to the external sources, you’re letting the search engine bots slip to other sites.
There are WordPress plugins or nofollow scripts (for manual insertion) available for bloggers and affiliate marketers. Plus, you could always use a top-notch link management tool to have more control over your links, even when you’re shortening them.
iv. Increase Clickability
The experts in the SEO industry believe that visitors are likely to click more on short links rather than long links. You may have noticed that professional SEOs and bloggers keep their page URL slugs as short as possible. The same goes for other links, such as affiliate links.
Pro-bloggers and SEO experts think that shorter links get more clickability and add more relevance to the destination URL.
v. Ease of Management
When you’re using a URL shortener to track clicks or conversion, you don’t just have control over data and statistics, but you also have ease of link management. Using a tool like Replug would enable you to track clicks on the short links as well as help you retarget the audiences who have clicked on the links.
So these were some of the main reasons why you should cloak affiliate links and make this process a part of your affiliate marketing regime.
Two Reasons Why Most Affiliate Marketers Fail At Affiliate Marketing
1. Zero Understanding
The no. 1 reason why most affiliate marketers fail is that they don’t figure it out. They think that just because they’ve put out a link to an affiliate product, people will click and buy the product.
It doesn’t work that way – you have to convince people that this product is worth buying. In some cases, the affiliate marketer purchases the product themselves to test out and share the results with the audience. It earns them the trust and loyalty of the audience. Be ready to go above and beyond to earn trust online.
2. Get Quick Rich Scheme
Affiliate marketing isn’t a quick money-making scheme. You’re most likely to fail at affiliate marketing if you don’t have the patience. It ain’t work too fast. Most bloggers who successfully monetize their blogs with affiliate marketing have had loads of failures, and they always learn from their mistakes.
If you want quick money out of it, you’re destined to fail at affiliate marketing. It doesn’t matter if you start with bloggers, YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok – it makes no difference unless you understand the game.
Affiliate links drive website visitors to the merchant’s website or landing page. It’s not rocket science that driving traffic to a page or website helps the destination page or website because everyone knows this.
But there is a caveat: if a link is pointing the visitor in a specific direction per se, then the destination page would benefit from it unless the link is nofollowed.
Whenever a link is nofollowed, the search engine bots are directed not to follow the link. This way, the bots don’t travel through that link. Thus, the page or website keeps the bots for a little longer.
However, some SEOs believe that even nofollow links add credibility and trustworthiness in the search engines’ eyes, but not in the same way as the dofollow links.
If you’re wondering whether or not the affiliate links affect SEO, then here are a few cases when affiliate links could potentially affect the SEO performance of a site:
i. Dofollow External Links
Since affiliate links are external or outbound links because they’re directing visitors to a merchant’s website, they could harm your site SEO if they’re dofollow. Most bloggers and affiliate marketers keep their affiliate links nofollow to avoid passing the unnecessary juice to the merchant’s website.
It’s safe to say that dofollow external links could affect your site’s SEO unless they aren’t taken care of from an SEO standpoint.
ii. Broken Affiliate Links
When affiliate links are broken, they’re quite damaging for an affiliate marketing website. There are several reasons why a broken link is dangerous; for instance, it doesn’t generate a sale, and it drives visitors away. This can frustrate readers when they don’t land on the intended merchant page.
So no doubt, a broken affiliate link could result in a bad user experience for your website visitors. And you can’t dominate with SEO techniques if you’re providing a bad user experience to the visitors.
Furthermore, there are WordPress plugins and online tools available that scan your site and report all the broken links.
iii. Clunky Product Links
Have you ever seen a long and clunky product link on e-commerce sites or affiliate blogs? When you hover on the products, you see unending URLs that seem scary at times.
One of the disadvantages of those clunky URLs is that they aren’t optimized for SEO. Plus, it scares visitors off due to their scammy appearance. Such affiliate product links are a no-go.
iv. Bunch of Affiliate Banners
A ton of affiliate product banner ads could frustrate visitors that are trying to learn about the product or find an answer to their query. You don’t have to bombard the visitors with several banner ads. Instead, put a couple of banner ads on the side or in the content if you have to put the banner ads.
Moreover, these image-based banner ads often increase the page loading speed, which fails websites at core web vitals. It’s Google’s mechanism to check and analyze the website page loading speed, accuracy, and quality.
So clearly, loads of banner ads could affect your site’s SEO performance.
However, there is no guarantee that more affiliates would bring in more money or fewer affiliate programs would earn you less money.
It seems impossible to pull off if you’re doing something wrong in affiliate marketing. On the other hand, it may look very simple to those bloggers who figured this out.
I’ve written a blog post about joining multiple affiliate programs and the gist of the blog post was that you should join multiple affiliate programs as long as they are in line with your content strategy.
A lot of affiliate bloggers say that building a topical authority on your blog or affiliate site is the stepping stone to start generating sales.
The way it works is that you test out different topics by publishing a handful of articles across three to four categories.
Once a cluster of topics starts getting traction from search engines, you could double-down on that and write a bunch of more articles on that topic/category and become an authority in that area. That’s how you build topical authority around a certain topic or category.
So several affiliate links or affiliate programs won’t make a difference unless your content is worth paying attention to from the readers’ standpoint.
However, indeed, placing dozens of the same affiliate links in a brief blog post may annoy the readers, so you need to create a balance in that area.
Make sure that your blog doesn’t look pushy when it comes to affiliate product insertion.
We’ve explained what affiliate links are and how they work on affiliate blogs.
The reason why we discussed this topic is that it’s vital to use link cloaking, especially when you’re monetizing blogs with affiliate marketing.
If you have been paying attention to quality content, link building, site design, page speed, and on-page SEO, then you can’t mess up with long and clunky affiliate links.
Several branded URL shorteners and affiliate link cloaking tools are available on the market. Choose the link cloaking tool that provides in-depth reporting and click-tracking so that you keep track of your clicks on the affiliate links.
