[ad_1]
Affiliate link cloaking is mostly used by affiliate marketers to help them hide their ridiculously long, and ugly looking affiliate links. In our previous post, we covered how you can create your own affiliate network and let other bloggers promote your products.
Whether you start your own affiliate platform or join other platforms, Link Cloaking is a must.
It is worth pointing out that looks aren’t the exact reason why you should cloak your links. Not only this makes your affiliate link URL more user-friendly but also protects your affiliate commissions from hijacking scripts. Cloaking of the affiliate links is also one of the best SEO practices to have short, readable URLs on your website. And if anything gets too large, then it will impact your SEO performance.
How to Cloak WordPress Affiliate Link?
WordPress offers many different affiliate link Cloaker plugins that can help you to mask your affiliate links. Most of them also come with many other relevant features such as 301 redirects, link tracking and so on.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the best WordPress affiliate link Cloaker plugins, which will be useful for WordPress bloggers, writers and marketers.
Also read: The 10 Best Affiliate Link Cloaking WordPress Plugins
If you don’t want to invest money just now and wish to test if link cloaking truly helps improve your site’s performance in the intended way, then go with the free options. However, if you desire access to advanced functionalities, then the premium plugins will be the way to go. Regardless of what you need, you are bound to find them helpful.
List of Best WordPress Link Cloaker Plugins
#1. Pretty Links
Pretty links is another excellent choice for WordPress affiliate marketing website. It is one of the most popular links tracking plugins in the marketplace. With the plugin installed on your site, you will be able to shorten links and thereby cloak them. Also, the shortened links will have your website’s domain name in them which gives all your links much more authority and trust.
Besides the link shortening ability, another key feature offered by this affiliate link Cloaker is a detailed analysis of the performance of your links. You will get comprehensive statistics like the number of hits/ unique hits each link is getting, IP address of the people using your links, their browser versions, operating system, referring sites, and much more. The plugin also gives you an intuitive interface to handle all this.
#2. ThirstyAffiliates Affiliate Link Manager
Next on our list of cloaking plugins for WordPress, we have Thirsty Affiliates Link Manager. It is a freemium plugin which means you can use the plugin for free, but if you want access to more advanced features, then you will need to buy the premium version. Since here we are only interested with link cloaking, the free version of the plugin will more than suffice.
It is evident from the name; this affiliate link Cloaker is directed to help you with affiliate marketing. As such, it features many options that will help you to manage your affiliate links better. One such feature is the ability to cloak your affiliate links (or any other links for that matter). There is also the option to use 301, 302, and 307 redirects so that your user’s browser doesn’t misjudge your links as malware.
#3. GoCodes
GoCodes-2 is a WordPress affiliate link cloaker plugin from WPNeon. The plugin lets you shorten your URL and mask them directly from WordPress. The plugin is easy to use. Hover over to your WordPress and Click on the GoCodes menu to access the plugin’s Settings page. You can add the redirection key in this field. A redirection key is a text that triggers the redirect to the actual affiliate link.
After adding the redirection key, add the Target URL. You can quickly track the number of times the key has been used for redirection. This link cloaker plugin also lets you add a ‘nofollow’ into the redirection process. The cloaked URL, along with their redirection, can be easily accessed from the settings page. You can also sort the cloaked links based on the added date, key, or the number of hits.
#4. Easy Affiliate Links
Next up, we have Easy Affiliate Links, another affiliate link cloaker plugin targeted at WordPress bloggers. The plugin not only helps you to cloak your links, but it can also help you to better manage all of them with ease. You have the option to cloak your links wherever you see fits individually. It basically shortens the links to hide them and to make them more manageable.
This WordPress affiliate link Cloaker plugin allows you to use categories for better management of your cloaked and uncloaked links. On top of that, you have the option to import as well as export, your links for backing up. Just like some of the other plugins, here too, you will get link tracking functionalities. Other notable features include the option for A/B testing, geotargeting, and a broken link checker.
#5. Auto Affiliate Links
Auto Affiliate Links WordPress plugin helps you to add affiliate links to your content automatically. This is one of the must-have plugins if you are an affiliate marketer. With the plugin installed, it will extract and display affiliate links from Amazon, Clickbank, and many more affiliate programs, without you having to lift a finger.
However, we are concerned about link cloaking, and this is also a feature handled expertly by the plugin. Not only affiliate link cloaking, but it will also allow you to make the links nofollow or dofollow, open in new pages, and much more. Also, if you wish to handle all the links yourself manually, then that can also be managed through the plugin settings pages.
#6. WooCommerce Cloak Affiliate Links
Next on our list is WooCommerce Cloak Affiliate Links. As you might have guessed from the name itself, this is a WooCommerce extension which will function if you have the WooCommerce already running on your WordPress website. The target demographic of the plugin are e-shop owners who wish to hide the links on their site.
This affiliate link Cloaker plugin is straightforward to use, but this is mostly because of the limited functionalities. You can only cloak links with the plugin, set up 301, 302, or 307 redirects, or make your links nofollow, and that’s it. You will not get any of the fancy tracking or reporting functionalities as you have seen with the other plugins. But if that is something you don’t need, then this is a solid option for your e-commerce website.
#7. LinkTrackr
LinkTrackr WordPress plugin is another one of the top WordPress link Cloaker plugins which come loaded with other functionalities too. However, here we are mostly focused on its link cloaking potential. First and foremost, the plugin supports mostly all the major affiliate programs in the market. You will be able to disguise all the affiliate links from these programs and create a shortened link containing your website domain name.
Other notable features of the plugin include detailed reporting, A/B split testing, the option to track pay per click ads, Google AdWords optimization, and much more. You also have complete control to set your own cookie rules as well as the specific duration for which a session should last. You will also get bot filtering, detailed commission reports, pixel and Postback tracking, and much more.
Any other Affiliate Link Cloaker Plugin for WordPress?
So, these were our top picks for the WordPress affiliate link Cloaker plugins. We hope you found this article helpful. If you already use one or two of the plugins we mentioned here, then do let us know about your experience using them in the comments section. Your fellow readers will love to learn from your experience.
[ad_2]
