There are several ways to hide your affiliate links with redirect and these include, in order of best method to least best method:
The simplest and easiest way to create a link redirect using PHP is a simple and short single line of code:
Replace http://www.google.com with whatever web address you wish.
If you want to use this method of php redirect and have there be a pause before the redirect, use the following php code:
Replace google.com with whatever web address you wish.
For either of these to work, the code has to be placed at the top of the page before any other html code. In fact, it is best to just open a blank text file, like notepad, put that line of code, all by itself on the page, and then save the page as a separate web page. The page has to be saved with a .php extension and not .htm or .html.
This is the ideal way to redirect your affiliate links.
This method involves creating a form with a submit button that is css styled to look like a regular link. When the submit button is click and the form is submitted, php code redirects the current page to the page of the affiliate link.
Inspect from the context menu.Click the above link and you will see it redirects, via php code, to an affiliate link to a chiseled abs program on Clickbank, even though the link LOOKS as though it goes directly to their website WITHOUT an affiliate link. I guarantee you none of your websites visitors or search engine are going to know this is an affiliate link that redirects php.
Personally, this is by far our favorite way of creating affiliate redirects.
It is the smoothest and most stealth way because the website visitor will have no idea whatsoever that the link they are clicking is an affiliate link and this method also allows you to secretly and silently load a cookie dropping image in the background as the page is redirecting.
Even though Google says it has no problems, SEO-wise, with links that redirect to affiliate links, the best approach is not even have Google know you have affiliate links on your web pages and this PHP method of affiliate link redirect is a method that is least likely to be discovered by Google, any other search engines OR your website visitors.
This first part of the PHP affiliate link redirect is the form that is the affiliate link.
You can find to tool the create this completely cloaked affiliate at our Ultimate Completely Hide Affiliate Link via PHP Kit 🤿.. Just follow the simple step by step instructions there to create this completely cloaked link/form. This link opens in a new window so you don't lose your place here on this page.
The second part of the PHP affiliate link redirect is PHP code that ...
You can also find this tool to create this second part of the php redirect affiliate link hiding code at our Ultimate Completely Hide Affiliate Link via PHP Kit 🤿.. This page opens in a new window so you don't lose your place here. Just follow the simple step by step instructions there to create the code that actually performs the redirect in a stealth manner.
Hiding affiliate links with .htaccess is essentially the same as 301 redirection.
Htaccess is a file that a web server looks at when a web page is requested. An htaccess file can contain all types of directives and commands. A 301 redirect is considered a page moved permanently htaccess command, versus a 302 redirect which is considered a page moved temporarily redirect. For the purpose of affiliate link redirection, there does not really have to be a former page that was moved for this affiliate link redirect to work.
Here is how to edit your htaccess file to perform a 301 affiliate link redirect:
.htaccess. That may look like a strange filename but literally you want to save the blank file as .htaccess with nothing before the period.Redirect 301 [the PATH of url of link on your web page that will be redirected to the affiliate link] [the FULL url of the affiliate link]Redirect (Capital R all other letters lower case) followed by a single space followed by [the PATH of url of link on your web page that will be redirected to the affiliate link] followed by a space followed by [the FULL url of the affiliate link].The PATH of a url is the part of the url that comes AFTER the http://www.whateverwebaddress.com. For example if the FULL url is http://www.whateverwebaddress.com/blabla/blabla.htm the PATH of that url is /blabla/blabla.htm.
Use this free htaccess redirect code generator tool to create your affiliate redirect. You can specify either a 301 or 302 type redirect, but for affiliate marketing url redirection purposes a 301 htaccess redirect is usually the way to go.
This method of using Javascript to redirect to the affiliate url is the least preferred method because:
It does not get any simpler than that. Simply replace http://www.whateverwebaddressyouwant.com with your affiliate link or whatever url you wish. Place the Javascript code anywhere withing the web page source code you wish. If you want the webpage to redirect as quickly as possible, put the Javascript code at the top of the page.
If you want there to be a delay in the redirect it simply requires a slight modification to the above Javascript code.
Again, replace http://www.whateverwebaddressyouwant.com with your affiliate link or whatever url you wish. Place the above Javascript code anyone within the web page source code you wish.
The above Javascript code employs a 3 second delay before the redirect. You can change the time of delay by changing the number of seconds you desire a delay muliplied by 1000. So for example if you want a 5 second delay, change 3000 to 5000. If you want a 1 second delay, change 3000 to 1000.
This method of hiding affiliate links with redirect is probably the most sneaky, in terms of the visitors experience and is a little bit better than that previous Javascript method of redirecting affiliate links. This method of redirecting your affiliate links using Javascript is a better method than Method #1 above.
The Javascript source code for this affilialte hiding redirect is below.
Here is how to use/install it:
</body> tag or in between the closing </body> tag and closing </html> tag.<script> before the start of the code and </script> after the code.Here is the javascript code for this method of hiding affiliate links with redirect:
Top executives at Google were interviewed regarding the topic of using redirection for affiliate links and their response is there is no SEO penalty regarding using redirects for affiliate links.
From an SEO standpoint there is absolutely nothing wrong with redirecting affiliate links unless something about the redirection misleads the web page visitor or something compromises the satisfaction of the visitor of your web page.
Remember, from an SEO standpoint, it is all about website visitor experience. After you finish creating a web page, including web pages where you have links that redirect to affiliate links, ask yourself "would I be 100% ok with and have no problems or complaints regarding my experience with visiting the web page?".
When it comes to anything you do with any web page, including web pages where you redirect your affiliate links, it all comes down to the satisfaction of the experience your website visitor has. A good rule of thumb is if you would feel comfortable sending your mother to the web page with your affiliate link redirects, then your web page is probably perfectly fine from an SEO standpoint.
My personal opinion is Google may not hate sites with affiliate links, but they don't love them either. If Google had to choose between favoring one of two web pages and one of them had no affiliate links and the second web page was exactly the same as the first web page, the only difference being that the second web page had an affiliate link, Google will favor the web page with no affiliate links. This is the main reason you want to hide your affiliate links using proper redirecting code.
