How to Cloak Affiliate Links (3 Methods + Plugin Guide)

I've been cloaking my affiliate links since I started affiliate marketing more than a decade ago, and I can tell you firsthand: raw affiliate URLs kill your click-through rates.

Nobody wants to click a 200-character tracking link stuffed with random parameters. It looks sketchy. It screams "I'm about to track you." And worse, it leaves your commissions vulnerable to hijacking.

Link cloaking fixes all of this. You turn those ugly URLs into clean, branded links that people actually trust and click. Plus, you protect yourself from commission theft and make link management about 100x easier.

I'll show you exactly how I cloak my affiliate links using three different methods. We'll cover URL shorteners (no website needed), manual cloaking (for the technical folks), and WordPress plugins (my personal favorite). By the end, you'll have clean, professional affiliate links that get more clicks and keep your earnings safe.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. However, if you're not cloaking your affiliate links, you're leaving money on the table. 

What is Affiliate Link Cloaking?

Affiliate link cloaking is when you replace a long, messy affiliate URL with a short, branded link on your own domain that redirects to the same destination.

Instead of showing your readers something like this:

https://tracking-network.com/a_aid=29471&chan=blog&data1=review&data2=sidebar

You show them this:

https://yoursite.com/recommends/product-name

Both links send visitors to the exact same place. The difference is that the second one looks professional, builds trust, and doesn't expose your affiliate ID to the world.

Here's what happens behind the scenes: when someone clicks your cloaked link, your server receives the request, looks up the destination URL you've mapped to that slug, then redirects the visitor to your actual affiliate link. The whole process happens in milliseconds. The visitor lands where they're supposed to go, your tracking fires correctly, and you get credit for the sale.

The key is that you're not hiding where the link goes or tricking anyone. You're just making the URL readable and manageable. It's the same reason companies use bit.ly links instead of pasting full URLs in tweets.

Why Should You Cloak Your Affiliate Links?

I cloak every single affiliate link on my site. Here's why you should too.

Cloaked links get more clicks. People trust URLs that use your domain name. A link like drews-review.com/recommends/semrush tells visitors exactly what they're clicking on. Compare that to https://www.semrush.com/sas/?aid=123456&aff_id=abcdef&utm_source=blog – which one would you click?

I've seen this play out across hundreds of affiliate links. Clean URLs perform better. They look professional, they're easy to share, and they don't trigger the same "this looks like spam" reaction that raw tracking links do.

You protect your commissions from theft. This is huge. There's malicious software out there called "stealware" that scans web pages for affiliate IDs, strips them out, and replaces them with someone else's ID. They steal your sale, you get nothing.

When you cloak your links, your affiliate ID is hidden in the redirect. The stealware can't find it, can't replace it, and you keep the commission you earned.

Link management becomes incredibly easy. This is the benefit that saves me hours every month. When an affiliate program changes their tracking URL (and they do this all the time), I update it once in my link management dashboard. Every instance of that cloaked link across my entire site automatically points to the new destination.

Without cloaking, I'd have to hunt through every post, find every occurrence of that link, and manually update each one. I learned this the hard way years ago when a program switched platforms. Finding all those links was a nightmare. Never again.

Ad blockers won't catch your links. Many ad blockers automatically hide anything that looks like an affiliate link. When you cloak using your own domain, the link doesn't match the patterns ad blockers are scanning for. Your links stay visible, and you don't lose clicks.

Your links survive platform restrictions. Try sharing a 200-character affiliate link on Twitter or in an Instagram bio. It doesn't fit, it looks terrible, and most people won't click it. Cloaked links are short, clean, and work everywhere.

How to Cloak Affiliate Links Without a Website

Yes, it is possible to cloak affiliate links even if you don't have your own website. You can do this using a URL shortener. They are free to use and very simple to set up. Here are the most common ones:Bitly

1. Bit.ly

Bit.ly probably the easiest tool to use. All you need to do is paste your link into the box, select how long you'd like your shortened link to be, and hit "Create." From here, you can choose to embed the link onto another web page or even send it via email. Many affiliate marketers on YouTube use bit.ly to cloak their affiliate links. I'm sure you've heard them say many times -"links in the description below."

2. TinyURL

TinyURL is similar to Bitly, except it doesn't offer the same level of customization. Instead, you simply enter your URL, select how long you want it to be, and press "Create." After that, you can either copy the code directly or save it to your clipboard.

3. Rebrandly

Rebrandly is a URL shortener and link management platform that offers users the ability to brand, track, and share their links. In addition to custom URLs, Rebrandly also offers users the ability to add their own logo, track clicks and conversions, and share links on social media. Rebrandly is an ideal solution for businesses and individuals who want to brand their links and measure their link performance.

How to Cloak Affiliate Links Without a Plugin

You can cloak links manually by editing your site's .htaccess file. I don't recommend this method unless you're comfortable working with server files and writing redirect rules.

If you're new to affiliate marketing, skip this section and go straight to the plugin method below. Plugins handle all of this automatically, and you won't risk breaking your site with a typo in your .htaccess file.

That said, if you want to do it manually, here's how it works.

You'll need to create or edit a file called .htaccess in your website's root directory. If you already have this file (most WordPress sites do), you can add the following code to it:

RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(affiliateID1|affiliateID2).*$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1?a_aid=affiliateID [R=301,L]

Replace affiliateID1 and affiliateID2 with your actual affiliate IDs, and replace www.yourdomain.com with your website's URL.

This code redirects any visitor who doesn't have an affiliate cookie to your website with the affiliate ID attached as a query parameter. You can then use that parameter in your links to track clicks and commissions.

Important: After you save the file, change the file permission to 644. If you don't do this, the redirect won't work.

Also, this method only works if your visitors have cookies enabled. If someone has cookies disabled in their browser, they'll still see your raw affiliate links.

Honestly, unless you have a specific technical reason to manage redirects this way, just use a plugin. It's faster, safer, and you get click tracking built in.

How to Cloak Affiliate Links Using a Plugin

If you're running a WordPress site, use a plugin. I've been using Pretty Links since I started drews-review.com, and it's the easiest way to manage affiliate links.

There's a free version and a paid version. The free version does everything you need for basic link cloaking. I'll walk you through exactly how I set it up.

Example: Using Pretty Links for Affiliate Link Cloaking

Pretty Links is one of the most popular link cloaking plugins for WordPress. Over 200,000 sites use it, and for good reason. It handles all the redirect configuration automatically, tracks your clicks, and gives you a clean dashboard to manage everything.

Here's my step-by-step process.

Step 1: Install the Pretty Links Plugin

Log in to your WordPress dashboard. Go to Plugins > Add New and search for "Pretty Links". Install and activate the plugin.

The free version appears in the results. Click "Install Now" and then "Activate."

Step 2: Access the Plugin

Once it's activated, you'll see a new menu item called "Pretty Links" in your WordPress dashboard sidebar. Click on it.

On the Pretty Links page, click the "Add New Link" button. This opens the link creation screen.

Step 3: Create Your Link

Here's where you configure your cloaked link. A popup window appears with several fields.

Target URL: Paste your full affiliate link here. This is the long, ugly URL your affiliate program gave you.

Redirect Type: This is important. Choose 307 Temporary for affiliate links.

I know it seems backwards – why use "temporary" for a link you plan to keep? Here's why: a 307 redirect keeps SEO value on your own pages instead of passing it to the merchant's site. It also preserves the HTTP request method, which matters for certain tracking scripts.

Affiliate programs change their tracking URLs constantly. Using 307 tells search engines "this redirect might change," which is accurate. If you use 301 (permanent), search engines think the page has moved forever, and you can run into indexing issues if the affiliate URL changes later.

Pretty much every 2026 guide recommends 307 for affiliate links. That's what I use across my entire site.

Pretty Link: This is your cloaked URL slug. I usually use either go/ or recommends/ before the product name.

For example, if you're promoting a product called "blue widgets," you'd enter go/blue-widgets or recommends/blue-widgets.

Your full cloaked link would look like this: https://yoursite.com/go/blue-widgets

That's way better than the original affiliate link, and it tells visitors exactly where they're going.

H3: Affiliate Link Cloaking Customization With Pretty Links

After you create the basic link, scroll down to the options section. Here's what I check on every affiliate link:

No Follow: Always check this box for affiliate links. This tells search engines not to pass link authority to the destination site. You want to keep your link equity on your own pages, not send it to the merchant.

Sponsored: This is Google's preferred attribute for affiliate and paid links. It's an alternative to nofollow that specifically identifies commercial relationships. Some people use both nofollow and sponsored together. I use sponsored on all my affiliate links now.

Parameter Forwarding: Check this if you need to pass query parameters through the redirect (like coupon codes or tracking IDs). Most of the time you won't need this, but it's useful in specific cases.

Tracking: This enables Pretty Links' built-in click tracking. You'll see how many times each link gets clicked.

Here's the tradeoff: tracking adds a slight delay when someone clicks your link. Pretty Links needs to log the click before redirecting. If you're on a slow server, this can add 1-2 seconds.

If your site loads fast and your server can handle it, use tracking. The data is worth it. But if you notice your links taking more than 3 seconds to redirect, turn off tracking. Nobody waits that long – they'll click away and you lose the sale.

I use nofollow, sponsored, and tracking on all my links. My server handles it fine, and I like seeing which links perform best.

Once you've configured everything, click "Create" or "Update" and you're done. Your cloaked link is ready to use.

Conclusion

If you're not cloaking your affiliate links yet, start today. It takes about 5 minutes to set up, and you'll immediately see the difference in how professional your links look.

I showed you three ways to do it: URL shorteners if you don't have a website, manual .htaccess redirects if you're technical, and WordPress plugins if you want the easiest solution with the best features.

For most people, Pretty Links is the answer. It handles all the redirect configuration automatically, tracks your clicks, and makes link management actually manageable. Thirsty Affiliates is another solid option that works almost identically.

The key benefits you get: cleaner links that people actually trust and click, protection from commission theft, way easier link management when affiliate programs change their URLs, and better performance on platforms with character limits or ad blockers.

Every serious affiliate marketer uses link cloaking. It's just part of running a professional operation.

If you're new to affiliate marketing and want to learn the full strategy – not just link cloaking but how to build a real affiliate business – check out my recommendations for the best affiliate marketing courses. I've personally taken and reviewed every course on that list, and they'll teach you everything from content strategy to conversion optimization.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I cloak affiliate links for free?

All the methods I showed you are free. URL shorteners like Bitly, TinyURL, and Rebrandly have free plans. Pretty Links and Thirsty Affiliates both offer free versions that handle basic link cloaking perfectly fine.

The paid plans unlock extra features like advanced tracking, link rotation, and automatic link insertion. But for basic cloaking, the free tools do everything you need.

Can I cloak my Amazon affiliate links?

No. Don't cloak Amazon affiliate links in a way that hides the fact you're linking to Amazon.

Amazon's Operating Agreement explicitly states that you can't use link shortening or cloaking in a way that makes it unclear you're sending people to Amazon. They want visitors to know before they click that they're going to Amazon.

You can use Amazon's built-in URL shortener (amzn.to), which is compliant. Or if you're using a plugin like Thirsty Affiliates, enable the "smart uncloaking" feature specifically for Amazon links. This lets you manage the link in your dashboard while showing visitors a clearly identifiable Amazon URL on the front end.

Breaking Amazon's rules will get you banned from their program. It's not worth the risk.

Should I use 307 or 301 redirects for affiliate links?

Use 307 temporary redirects for affiliate links. This is the standard recommendation in 2026.

A 307 redirect keeps SEO value on your own pages instead of passing it to the merchant's site. It also tells search engines the redirect is temporary, which is accurate since affiliate URLs change frequently.

Avoid 301 permanent redirects for affiliate links. A 301 tells search engines the page has permanently moved, which transfers link equity to the merchant and can cause indexing problems if the affiliate program changes their tracking URL later.

Most modern cloaking plugins default to 307 now. That's what I use across my entire site.

Do I need to cloak my affiliate links?

You don't have to, but you should. Cloaking isn't required by most affiliate programs, but it gives you three major advantages: cleaner links that get more clicks, protection from commission theft, and way easier link management.

Raw affiliate links look suspicious to visitors and perform worse. I've seen the difference across hundreds of links on my own site. Cloaked links get clicked more often.

Why should you be careful with cloaking your referral links?

Some affiliate programs don't allow link cloaking. Always check your affiliate program's terms of service before you start cloaking links.

Most programs are fine with it – they understand why marketers do it. But a few programs (Amazon being the big one) have strict rules about how you can modify their links.

If you cloak links incorrectly, you can also break tracking. Make sure you test your cloaked links before you start using them everywhere. Click the link yourself, complete a test purchase if possible, and verify that the tracking fires correctly.

How do I hide affiliate links on Facebook?

Use a URL shortener like Bitly or Rebrandly. Facebook allows shortened links, and they make your affiliate URLs shorter and more manageable.

Just paste your affiliate link into the URL shortener, get your shortened version, and use that in your Facebook posts. The link still tracks properly – it just looks cleaner.

Do I need to cloak my affiliate links on Pinterest?

You can cloak links on Pinterest, but there's a risk. Pinterest sometimes removes pins with cloaked or shortened links.

The safer approach is to link to a landing page on your own site that contains your affiliate links. For example, create a blog post reviewing the product, then link to that post from Pinterest. Your affiliate links live on your site where you control them.

This also gives you better conversion rates. People who click through to your content and read your review are more likely to buy than people who get sent directly to a product page.

Does YouTube allow link cloaking?

YouTube allows link shorteners in video descriptions. You can use Bitly, TinyURL, or any other shortener for your affiliate links.

There's some debate about whether shortened links get removed. I've seen YouTube remove some shortened affiliate links but leave others alone. Amazon affiliate links seem to work fine most of the time.

My recommendation: use a shortener for convenience, but also include the product name in your video description so viewers know what they're clicking. This builds trust and keeps you compliant with FTC disclosure requirements.

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