The topic of link cloaking often gets tangled up in confusion. While the term "cloaking" might sound shady, it's actually a common and beneficial technique used in the realm of online marketing. So, what exactly is link cloaking? What is its significance, and how does link cloaking work? Let's explore all of this in this article.
What is link cloaking?
If you're wondering what link cloaking is, don't skip this section!
Link cloaking, also known as link masking, URL masking, URL cloaking, or link disguising, involves the process of concealing a user's intended destination displayed in the web browser's address bar. Instead, it displays the current landing page within an iFrame.
This practice proves particularly valuable in the realm of affiliate marketing, where the objective is to shield the user from viewing an affiliate URL.
You have the option to merge link cloaking with a vanity URL, allowing the use of any desired URL for the concealed page. This includes the utilization of your very own domain through ShortenWorld. ShortenWorld serves as both a link shortener and a link cloaker.
This approach empowers you to present users with attractive links, rather than affiliate links. As a result, trust, brand recognition, and most importantly, the click-through rate, all experience a significant boost.
Why Link Cloaking Matters?
Link cloaking operates much like the process of link shortening. In fact, it's often the case that when you cloak a link, you also make it shorter, although this isn't obligatory.
The primary focus of link cloaking revolves around establishing a distinct identity for your URLs and safeguarding any sensitive details they may encompass. Consider this illustration of a long link that has undergone cloaking:
Original: example.com/?clickid=abcds12345
Cloaked: yourwebsite.com/product-name
The difference might seem subtle, yet it wields a significant impact. While link cloaking proves valuable across various scenarios, its potency truly shines in the realm of affiliate marketing. Employing this strategy, you're able to obscure your affiliate IDs and seamlessly incorporate your brand name into your linking approach.
The act of concealing your affiliate IDs becomes imperative when substantial sales are at play. As you're likely aware, the landscape of affiliate marketing is fiercely competitive. Instances of malware infiltrating visitors' devices to detect and replace affiliate ID-laden links have been reported.
This malicious maneuver allows bad actors to snatch your commissions without detection. Affiliate link cloaking disrupts such assaults by veiling your affiliate IDs.
Lastly, a common misconception suggests that link cloaking adversely affects your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Fortunately, this notion has been consistently dispelled by SEO experts. For those engaged in affiliate marketing, there exists no valid rationale against adopting link cloaking practices.
5 Reasons Every Affiliate Marketer Must Implement Link Cloaking
Using a link cloaking solution such as ShortenWorld offers several key benefits:
- Boost Click-Through Rates: As mentioned earlier, an affiliate link often appears unattractive and lacks user-friendliness. In today's digital landscape, users hesitate to click on links that appear untrustworthy. By shortening links through link cloaking, you can increase click-through rates and subsequently enhance your commission potential.
- Memorability and Manageability: Imagine how many people would remember an original affiliate link with a string of numbers and characters? Certainly not many. However, after shortening links using various tools, you'll find it easy to recall links for different products.
For instance, when promoting hosting services, you can create user-friendly shortened links like http://domain/hosting, and simply add the product path as a suffix, such as /product. Isn't that incredibly easy to remember and manage? - Simplified Analytics: Through URL masking, tracking clicks becomes effortless. You'll be able to easily analyze how many clicks your links receive, which articles on your website/blog attract the most clicks, and more. This enables you to assess, modify, and improve your content to reach a wider audience, generate more clicks, and ultimately earn higher commissions.
- Increase the Rate of Emails Sent to the Inbox: One of the advantages of link cloaking in affiliate marketing is that it significantly reduces the chances of your emails landing in spam folders. Spam filters tend to dislike affiliate links. By shortening and embedding these links in your email content, you drastically enhance the likelihood of your emails directly reaching the inbox!
- Incorporating Retargeting/Remarketing: You can affix retargeting and remarketing tags to cloaked pages, which facilitates displaying advertisements to users who haven't yet converted.
How to cloak affiliate links for free?
Currently, Shortenworld stands as one of the leading free link cloaking tools. Here, you not only gain the capability to create a considerable number of free shorten links but also unlock the capability to cloak affiliate links.
This is a relatively new tool compared to Bitly or Linkly; however, it's incredibly powerful and easy to use. For more enhanced features, you can explore Shortenworld's paid version.
Have you employed the link cloaking technique in your affiliate marketing yet? How do you perceive its significance? Give this feature on ShortenWorld.com a try!