How to Hide my Affiliate Links to prevent Google Slap and red flag my Blog
August 24, 2009 by Zane Abden
Filed under Zane's Marketing Tips, Zane's Posts
Google made me an offer I cannot refuse, get rid of your affiliate links or I will slap your Blogs and put them down!!
This is what we have been hearing from Google today. the fact is you can still put your affiliate link inside your Blog under one condition is to cloak your affiliate link or hide it . this is very important because google hates long ugly affiliate links and its your job to make your URL pretty and looks like a part of your Blog page.
Most people are lazy and don’t bother to use plug ins, instead they use free and cheap method such as Bit.ly, tinyurl and others. this will not just make your URL looks ugly but also Google may give your Blog a lower score just by included these cheap URL in your Blog content.
the best URL shorten and cloak plugin I use is called pretty link, why?
you can track your click and see which page in your blog you are receiving the click on top of that is not having to add the extra directory for the URL. for example most URL shorten plugins will need to add an extra directory to your main domain name in order to work such as www.yourdomain/directoryname/URL-slug name
But with pretty link your shorten URL will look like this
www.yourdomainname.com/url-slugname
this will make it look more professional and your click rate will be higher as well , this is just one of the pretty link plugin’s feature however if you would like to use extra feature such as convert any keyword inside your Blog content into a link then you will need to upgrade your free pretty link into a paid version pretty link pro, you can also randomise your URL for each keyword for example you can let the plugin test two different URLs say for example the key-phrase “lose weight” can be replace with a link URL1 and URL2 alternatively to see which URL is bringing better conversion.
you may wonder if this plugin does replace every key phrase wouldn’t your Blog looks spammy full of links? you are right thats why pretty link comes with a feature where you can control the number of links inside your Blog post or page
but hey what about tweeting your blog so you will get traffic immediately? it may sound weird but pretty link pro does that for you too unlike other tweet plugins where yo cannot tweet from a specific category , with pretty link pro you can control your tweets imagine how annoy when you have an automated article publisher where it tweet every article you post inside your blog, this will make your twitter account sound spamy.
if you are an affiliate and would like to turn a specific keyword inside your Blog into a URL link automatically contain your affiliate link ,track your clicks and test between two URLs then pretty link pro is what you will need to have , otherwise just download free pretty link it will be enough for you.