If you are a blogger or an affiliate
marketer than you may be annoyed with the ugly looking affiliate links. I
don’t need to discuss the importance of affiliate links here but i want
to discuss a problem related to affiliate links and that is link
hijacking. In Link hijacking a virus or spyware is injected into your
system that will rewrite affiliate links on affiliate pages when you
visit them.
This means that if you are buying a web-hosting via my affiliate link in order to give me the commission but if your computer have this bad software installed than it will rewrite the affiliate link at the time of browsing and hence commission will be given to the hacker not me. So is this the end of world for affiliate marketers or does it have any solution to this problem.
Link Cloaking.
The solution to Link hijacking is Link
Cloaking. You may be wondering how this can prevent viruses to hack
affiliate links. First of all we have to understand how Link hijacking
works. Link hijacking code detect affiliate links if they are not
belongs to your website means external links. Suppose if i have
HostGator web-hositng link on my website Link hijack code will easily
detect it because my website is Internet-khazana.com and it totally
differs from Hostgator.com link.
Now Link cloaking plugin will give you
the option to hide the affiliate link and convert it into your website
internal link. Now link hijack code will recognize it as internal link
and hence will not change the link parameters. This is very easy
solution to the very dangerous situation because you do all the hard
work but you will never earn a single penny and all the money goes to
the hacker.
Link Cloaking plugins for WordPress.
Now you know the importance of link
cloaking plugins its time to choose one and install. Below are top 5
WordPress plugins to hide affiliate links.
1. Pretty Link.
It is the best link cloaking plugin used
by more than 400K bloggers around the world. Can be used to shrink and
hide your affiliate links. The beauty of this plugin is that it gives
you the option to edit your permalink so you can create your own
permalink rather than the default one like Recommend, Refer or which
ever you like. It has nofollow option which is good for SEO and 307
temporary and 301 permanent link options. This plugin is so easy to use,
just copy paste the affiliate link, give it a name used for permalinks
and click on create button and you are done.
2. GoCodes.
Gocodes is a simple yet powerful link
shortener and redirection plugin for WordPress. Mostly used for
Podcasting and to hide affiliate links. Very simple to use and all the
option available are on the same page.
3. Simple URLs.
This is a plugin that is used by many
and its a complete link management system that will fulfill all your
needs. Link shorten process is very simple, all you have to do is a give
the affiliate link URL, name it and it will create a permalink for you.
The problem with this plugin is that you cannot change the default
permalink structure.
4. Link Hopper.
Another simple but great plugin to
redirect all your out going links. Setup links in just one click and if
you want to change the link than just open the plugin settings page,
change it and save it.
5. WP-LinkChanger.
Very small and light affiliate link
hiding plugin for WordPress used by many. This plugin automatically
changes all your outgoing links to internal links and hence you don’t
have to do it manually.