Do you obsfuscate affiliate URLs?

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seoargentina

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I have the idea that sites with affiliate links tends to be less considered on rankings becuase they have a tendency of beign sites with low quality and eeat. So i was thinking to obfuscate the links but i'm not sure if it worth it.

What do you think? How do you usually handle the affiliate links?
 
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There is no need to obfuscate affiliate links. It’s important to write quality useful content and ensure a quality user experience.
 
I wouldn't try to obfuscate affiliate links for SEO, that seems like an unnecessary distraction. Affiliate links aren't the issue by themselves thin and low-quality content is. Focus on genuinely useful material, be open about any affiliate relationship you have, and include rel="sponsored" where it actually applies. In the end, quality, credibility, and trust weigh way more for rankings than that link formatting ever will.
 
seoargentina said:
I have the idea that sites with affiliate links tends to be less considered on rankings becuase they have a tendency of beign sites with low quality and eeat. So i was thinking to obfuscate the links but i'm not sure if it worth it.

What do you think? How do you usually handle the affiliate links?
Click to expand...
In my view, hiding the affiliate link is not a perfect solution either. as far as I am concerned, the problem will never be with the affiliate link provided that the web page look profesional, experimental nd informational.
 
Depends ony our content i woudln't recommend going with hiding it. Depending on what platform you can always give the link another display link than the actual link is. Works on platfroms such as telegram and discord for example. You can also buy a domain temporarily that looks trusted that would forward towards your own affiliate link it costs only like 2-10$ a year
 
google does not penalize a site just for having affiliate links brother.. they penalize low quality affiliate spam. keep your links clean with a simple redirect folder and add real value to the page.
 
I wouldn't obfuscate affiliate links just to try to improve rankings. Affiliate sites aren't automatically considered low quality, and I'd focus more on useful content, original insights, transparency, and strong E-E-A-T signals. For the links themselves, I'd keep them clear and use the appropriate rel="sponsored" attribute.
 
So annoying, soooo annoying, everyone has the same copy and paste answer for EVERYTHING.

"Google doesn't penalize affiliate links—it penalizes low-value affiliate content. If your content is original, helpful, and demonstrates real experience, affiliate links are generally not an issue."

"There is no need to obfuscate affiliate links. It’s important to write quality useful content and ensure a quality user experience."

"In the end, quality, credibility, and trust weigh way more for rankings than that link formatting ever will."

UUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Here is an honest take on your question:

Should you obfuscate them? It is a good practice. Not because of the rankings (well, also. I mean, Google's spam detection is now more advanced than it ever was, why would a well-known spammy casino link not hurt your page, even in the slightest way possible?) but because of competition. It takes a second for a competitor to take your affiliate link, run it through Ahrefs and see your whole network of pages. This could hurt you in many ways, one for example could be direct DMCA abuse, etc...
 
serpsystems said:
So annoying, soooo annoying, everyone has the same copy and paste answer for EVERYTHING.

"Google doesn't penalize affiliate links—it penalizes low-value affiliate content. If your content is original, helpful, and demonstrates real experience, affiliate links are generally not an issue."

"There is no need to obfuscate affiliate links. It’s important to write quality useful content and ensure a quality user experience."

"In the end, quality, credibility, and trust weigh way more for rankings than that link formatting ever will."

UUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Here is an honest take on your question:

Should you obfuscate them? It is a good practice. Not because of the rankings (well, also. I mean, Google's spam detection is now more advanced than it ever was, why would a well-known spammy casino link not hurt your page, even in the slightest way possible?) but because of competition. It takes a second for a competitor to take your affiliate link, run it through Ahrefs and see your whole network of pages. This could hurt you in many ways, one for example could be direct DMCA abuse, etc...
Click to expand...
that's actually a good take, didn't think about it.

And yes, i get the "build good content and everything will be fine", probably they are right but i wanted to push a bit more the thing, not only take the standard stuff

Thanks for sharing!
 
seoargentina said:
I have the idea that sites with affiliate links tends to be less considered on rankings becuase they have a tendency of beign sites with low quality and eeat. So i was thinking to obfuscate the links but i'm not sure if it worth it.

What do you think? How do you usually handle the affiliate links?
Click to expand...
Google cares more about content quality and whether the site actually helps user.i likely just use proper sponsored and focus on making the content useful.
 
I wouldn’t obfuscate affiliate links just because they’re affiliate links .

Google can still evaluate the overall quality and usefulness of the site. Focus on genuine E-E-A-T and use proper <span>rel="sponsored"</span> attribute.

good affiliate sites can rank well.
 
Ignore the bots telling you to just 'focus on helpful content', they have no practical SEO knowledge - get those affiliate links cloaked! Affiliate link patterns are part of the HCU classifiers.
 
Scalesavage said:
I wouldn’t obfuscate affiliate links just for SEO. Better to keep them natural, use proper rel="sponsored" where appropriate, and focus on strong content and EEAT
Click to expand...
^ here's another one you should ignore
 
Steptoe said:
Ignore the bots telling you to just 'focus on helpful content', they have no practical SEO knowledge - get those affiliate links cloaked! Affiliate link patterns are part of the HCU classifiers.
Click to expand...
Plugins Pretty links and auto affiliate links pro claim to cloak the affiliate links. And there are a bunch of wordpress free and paid plugins that claims to cloak the links.
Do they really cloak the links as far as detection is concern by google? What do you think?
Do you have any suggestions.
 
I don’t hide affiliate links. I keep them clear, use rel="sponsored", and focus on good content and trust.
 
Pretty links does an ok job but I prefer to use a tracker, you have a lot more options with it

In the past I was using adsbridge now I switched to bemob (if you have under 100k hits/mo you can get the free tier).. with them you can not only cloak but also track your clicks, keywords.. basically anything and everything, you can also hide referral, split test offers, change them based on geo location .. etc..


IM Dude said:
Plugins Pretty links and auto affiliate links pro claim to cloak the affiliate links. And there are a bunch of wordpress free and paid plugins that claims to cloak the links.
Do they really cloak the links as far as detection is concern by google? What do you think?
Do you have any suggestions.
Click to expand...
 
IM Dude said:
Plugins Pretty links and auto affiliate links pro claim to cloak the affiliate links. And there are a bunch of wordpress free and paid plugins that claims to cloak the links.
Do they really cloak the links as far as detection is concern by google? What do you think?
Do you have any suggestions.
Click to expand...
I haven't used this plugin, but as it will be open source the patterns are probably easy to work out. Personally I use several buffer domains for my affiliate links. So for an affiliate link for 'red widgets' I will link to a variation of mybufferdomain.com/red-widgets.html and then have a script to handle requests to this url, sending anything that looks real to the affiliate link, and for anything that looks remotely like a bot I will display an article/content about red widgets.
 
Steptoe said:
I haven't used this plugin, but as it will be open source the patterns are probably easy to work out. Personally I use several buffer domains for my affiliate links. So for an affiliate link for 'red widgets' I will link to a variation of mybufferdomain.com/red-widgets.html and then have a script to handle requests to this url, sending anything that looks real to the affiliate link, and for anything that looks remotely like a bot I will display an article/content about red widgets.
Click to expand...
Diverting the bot traffic makes sense. These must me wordpress plugin doing this. Will find out or create one, may be sell it on wordpress.org.
 
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