Affiliate link cloaking: Why, How, Is it Legitimate?
Guest Post by: Chirag gadara
Dear affiliate marketers, today in this article I am going to share you some tips on “Affiliate Link Cloaking”. If you are in affiliate marketing or online business form quite a long time, you might be aware of “affiliate link cloaking”, you also might have heard about pros and cons of using automated link cloaking software and services. Here I am going to clear your all doubts and will explain why and affiliate link cloaking is most important and must do thing for getting success in your affiliate business online.
Before I explain importance and necessity, let us be clear what exactly I mean by “Affiliate Link Cloaking”. There are tow types of discussion regarding this subject on internet I heard.
Some people are describing this as bad thing and must avoid thing. Because they understand link cloaking as a tricks to hide your links from Google like search engines using JavaScript or some other tactics, which is purely against the ethical rules and Google’s guidelines. All these are true, if we consider or use link cloaking to hide your links from search engine bots to avoid Google penalties in unethical way.
But have you hear about “Affiliate Link Theft”? If yes, then you will understand the importance of this article at the end, if no, then here is the answer. If you are affiliate marketer and getting traffic to your product page, but no commission or no sells, you might be a victim of affiliate link theft.
Why people steal your affiliate links? , Simple, either to steal your affiliated commission by replacing your affiliate id with their own, or to directly deal with the vendor bypassing you by removing your affiliate id.
Benefits of using Affiliate Link Cloaking.
- You can convert your affiliate link like www. Affiliate site. Com/ link?, where “123” is your affiliate id, to www. Your own site.com/product/link. You can see that your link is converted to more trust worthy, more user friendly, easy to remember and also SEO friendly, but where is your affiliate id?, of course it’s hidden to protect you from link theft attack and loss of your valuable commission.
- It converts link to your own domain or other trust worthy domain, so buyer may think that this is your own product instead of some other’s product you are marketing for commission. It builds more trust between you and your buyer.
- You can track your links and hence accurate number of sells made from the link.
Why use Affiliate Link Cloaking software or service?
Because, doing it manually is time consuming task when you are marketing more than one product and you can use your valuable time in other marketing strategies. Another reason to buy link cloaking service or software it they are much cheaper so you can easily afford them.
So, now you know that here you are not doing anything to fool Google or other search engines, hence not to worry for penalty from search engines. This is secure and SEO friendly also.