Affiliate Marketing - Is Link Cloaking Really Necessary

The above question, is link cloaking really necessary, is one of those that has no definite yes or no answer. However the general consensus among affiliate marketers is that it helps to improve sales and conversions, so from that point of view the answer is yes, it is really necessary. First let us make the distinction between link cloaking and link redirecting. In the strictest sense, link cloaking refers to a technique that misleads customers, and is generally forbidden in the eyes of Google. How it might work is as follows: a visitor to a website might read an interesting article on a particular subject, and then choose to click a nearby link saying something like ‘click here for more information’. After the visitor clicks that link, the destination web page is something entirely different, on a completely different subject matter. That is the strictest sense of link cloaking. Link redirecting is different, there is nothing misleading intended when link redirection is used by affiliate marketers. The scenario might be the same as the example above, meaning that once again we have a visitor to our web page, who is reading an interesting article, and decides to click that ‘more information’ link. This time the destination web page is relevant to the previous page, meaning it is indeed more information on the same topic or same subject, and perhaps offering something for sale also. So to be precise, we should never do any form of link cloaking, because if this behaviour is noticed by Google, it usually means that the website will get penalised in the search engine ranks, and the owner may lose his or her Google account including any funds. However, when the majority of internet marketers use the phrase link cloaking, it is generally understood that they are referring to link redirecting. Those two phrases are often interchanged these days without getting corrected very much. So, back to the question, and this time we will slightly rephrase it as follows: Is link cloaking / link redirecting really necessary for affiliate marketers? Here is one reason why it is really necessary: some customers are mean. Perhaps that is an unfair statement, but it is generally considered to be true. When a visitor or potential customer is viewing your web page, that visitor can ‘see’ the destination website when they hover their mouse over the permalink. It depends on which internet browser the person is using, sometimes the destination link is displayed in a little bubble beside the mouse cursor, and sometimes it is displayed in the bottom section of the browser window. The fact is that most affiliate hyperlinks, or hop-links as they are also known as, are very obviously affiliate links. They usually contain the name of a website, followed by a long stream of extra words and symbols which can look very odd at times. In general, more and more people are becoming aware of these affiliate links and what they do, and sometimes these people deliberately choose not to click them. Instead they might go directly to that website by typing the name into their web browser’s address bar. A little bit sad, but very true! rnRyan King helps people to discover the benefits of using link cloaking software to your online business. As an experienced marketer with number of websites on the first page of Google, he would like to share his internet marketing journey.