How Does Link Cloaking Work?

If you're into affiliate marketing, you've probably already heard of the term "link cloaking" mentioned on some website or blog

. Link cloaking is a tactic that is surrounded by myth.

Wikipedia says that "Cloaking" is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the user's browser.

The myth is that link cloaking can get you banned from search engines, and that only "evil" people do it in the first place.

That's quite true when it's used in the context of search engine optimization. Search engines don't like it when people try to manipulate their algorithms with cloaking content pages. Therefore, they penalize any site that attempts to manipulate their search results using that tactic.

However, "cloaking" has a very different meaning and in affiliate marketing. There are a few reasons why an affiliate marketer may want to cloak his links.

The most common is to hide the actual affiliate link from being displayed in the browser. This helps the affiliate prevent commission theft, among other things. Commission theft happens when other affiliates replace your affiliate link with theirs while buying and deny you the commissions you deserve.

In niche markets where customers are not affiliate marketers themselves, this is a non-issue. However, in competitive markets like online marketing, search engine optimization and in the affiliate marketing niche itself, almost all potential customers are also affiliates.

This is especially true for products sold on ClickBank, since ClickBank actually encourages affiliates to buy with their own affiliate link.

The second is related to split testing multiple pages of the same website. Link cloakers can also be use to mask the actual destination URL for the purpose of testing multiple different product or offers. This allows affiliates to maximize their commissions by finding pages or products that convert better.

Besides that, link cloaking can be used to display many different types of optin forms or popup offers which isn't possible otherwise. As long as you have the right software, this is pretty easy to do.

Cloaking links can also help the affiliate marketer get viral traffic. Just by bookmarking or sharing your cloaked affiliate link on sites like FaceBook or Twitter, they are in fact spreading your affiliate link. By doing this, you get more clicks on your affiliate links, and more sales.

No matter how you choose to use link cloaking, make sure you use it responsibly. The only difference between white hat and black hat cloaking is your intentions. If you make sure your vistors are aware they are viewing a cloaked links and give them a way to remove the cloaking, it's a viable and legal marketing tool.

by: Gobala Krishnan

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