Does Link Cloaking Help Sales?

12 years ago

Well, in most cases, yes.

www()yoursite()com/buy-now

looks better than...

www()aff78hjdshk()com/adjljadkju8907adlk

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Matt121

12 years ago

Google does not prioritize cloaked links so it does not help your rankings one bit.

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SEO Haven 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Matt121

Google does not prioritize cloaked links so it does not help your rankings one bit.

Sure, it doesn't help your rankings, but it provides a better user experience (visually) and looks more trusting than some ugly or shortened affiliate link.
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brentb

12 years ago

Yeah, cloak to make it look pretty is nice but who cares about that? The real reason is you should always cloak so people can't see your traffic sources. I think people who don't are totally nuts! You know most affiliate networks have their own traffic... FYI! Don't give them your PPC keywords or show them little known traffic sources they can have an AHA moment on and push you out of it. Even if they don't its information affiliate managers now get access to and can slip to new publishers like "Oh yeah, we are getting tons of Adcenter traffic thats converting wildfire!" Great right! Your competition and cost just increased!

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Steve L

12 years ago

I personally like to be upfront with my visitors if a link is an affiliate link or not. I don't want to give them any reason not to trust me.

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Manie Amari 12 years ago

Originally Posted by Steve Longoria

I personally like to be upfront with my visitors if a link is an affiliate link or not. I don't want to give them any reason not to trust me.

Very nice of you to feel that way about your customers. However...

Originally Posted by Ken_Caudill

I've done it both ways with similar results. I don't think it matters.

However, how about having your affiliate link posted onto Porn sites?

You'd be surprised at what some people do. It's also against most affiliate networks (i.e. ClickBank) to promote offers on adult entertainment sites. You would get banned for breaking TOS.

Manie
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brentb

12 years ago

The only way to know is try it one way, then try it the other and see what makes you more money.

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Sushiman1111

12 years ago

My experience has been yes, it pays to cloak your links with affiliate stuff.

And yes, I've tested it both ways. Not even close.

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bizamanda

12 years ago

Some benefits of link cloaking:
- The long characters of affiliate URLs is just not nice to see. It would be better if you could make them pretty and simple.
- It's about gaining trust in order to make the sales. It will looks more professional and trusty if you have your own link.
- Preventing you from affiliate commission theft
- Easier to do SEO, you can have keyword relevance that you can put on the link. Google don't like affiliate links anyway...imo

Cheers,
Bizamanda

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michaelthomas

12 years ago

You could setup a URL short on a subdomain of your site this looks kind of trustworthy and use that as the cloak

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Dimachaerus

12 years ago

Yes it does because it looks less spammy, people won't go on a page that looks like it will give them a virus.

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Giggle

12 years ago

If your links are not cloaked you will lose sales and most affiliate links look spammy to a website visitor. you can use bit.ly to shorten your links so that they appear more appealing

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MA Robinson

12 years ago

Isn't link cloaking a form of deception? Cloaking pages using specialized SEO software might work for someone but this practice deceives internet users to click on a URL they think is related to the website they want to visit. Plus search engines often do not give priority to cloaked links.

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Lisha5684

12 years ago

I think it's better to cloak AND tell people that it's your referral link (I think people like the sound of "referral" better than "affiliate"). And people like honesty. Tell people you'll be getting a small commission and you'd appreciate it if they purchased through you since you were the one who told them about it. But either way it's fine with you because you just want to make sure they know about the best things out there.

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Gary Becks

12 years ago

You have to deal with things like this on a case by case (or should I say niche by niche) basis. It totally depends on your target audience.

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edpudol1973

12 years ago

If you're not displaying the affiliate link it self in your site or anywhere you want to promote it, it does not matter. Visitors will only see the Anchor Text, but if you want to display the url in your marketing campaign yes I believe it's better to use cloaking.

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Paleochora

12 years ago

I would stay away from third-party shortners like bit.ly

That particular one often puts a scam alert pop up in any clickbank link that you have shortened. Also, you are not fully in control.

It is better to use something like Prettylinks.

In fact, I use Richard Wing's excellent Best Damn Redirect. This not only makes a good URL like www . mysite . com/r/offer but it also allows me to split test sales pages and squeeze pages with the one URL. I can make tracking links with it too so it gives me a really good idea of where the bulk of traffic is coming from. There are other cool features - too many to list here. It is a tool I would find hard to be without.

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M42

12 years ago

I've read that cloaking can hurt your rankings. I don't believe it's necessary. OK I hear what you're saying about better user experience but aren't they looking at the page and not the URL. Best left naked in my opinion now that Google are on the war path with affiliate sites. Just my 2c worth.

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Paleochora

12 years ago

I have not seen evidence that a link from a webpage which has the same domain as the page and is then re-directed to the offer has any affect on rankings.

Where is this documented?

Anyway, if it is the case, then it will only be a concern if you solely rely on Google for your traffic.

Originally Posted by M42

I've read that cloaking can hurt your rankings. I don't believe it's necessary. OK I hear what you're saying about better user experience but aren't they looking at the page and not the URL. Best left naked in my opinion now that Google are on the war path with affiliate sites. Just my 2c worth.

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Mr. Ken Russell

12 years ago

If a link is hard to read, long or looks supicious it's proven that over 40% of people simply won't click it thinking it's spam or in some other way unrelated.

People gladly click on links that are nicely formated with relevance to the article or e-mail.

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Does Link Cloaking Help Sales?

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