Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is link cloaking bad?
-
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites.
In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links.
Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter?
Thanks for your help.
-
I can't make a judgement on it, but you might check out Graywolf's recent post this month on masking affiliate links. http://www.wolf-howl.com/affiliate-marketing/how-to-mask-affiliate-links/
-
Thanks
-
Thanks
-
Okay... when I think of cloaked link I think of a link that is being hidden from the user and is there only for keyword or other SEO purposes. If your link has a function, I think you are okay and the nofollow should do the trick.
-
So you use robots.txt to disallow indexing of anything under the /bet/ folder, you link to 'bet/XYZ' using nofollow and 'bet/XYZ' has a redirect on it?
I'm going to go with safe. It's a fairly common practice.
-
Not sure I explained my self properly, so if I show an example that might help.
The links I am cloaking are behind buttons which say 'bet now', the cloaked link is http://www.comparebestodds.com/bet/betfair/ and is set as nofollow.
The link which is cloaking is
http://www.betfair.com/?clkID=16251_67988CCB46EC4C389F77AD796257F6&rfr=16251This links are important as its what will make money for my site, and they are important to the users as this is what they need to click to get taken to a site to place a bet.
Hope that makes it a little clearer.
Thanks
-
It sounds like you're already nofollowing the links. This will reduce the number of links on your page as the Search Engines see it, which looks to be your goal.
Assuming this is what you're aiming to do, there's no reason to hide your links. If you don't want search engines OR users to see them, just get rid of them altogether.
-
So are the links usable to visitors of the site?
If you think the links are valuable, you should add the "nofollow" tag to not send over any link juice. Keeping them hidden from the visitor is a bad practice and I think could potentially get you penalized. If you don't want them used, then don't have them on the page.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Trailing slash URLs and canonical links
Hi, I've seen a fair amount of topics speaking about the difference between domain names ending with or without trailing slashes, the impact on crawlers and how it behaves with canonical links.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
However, it sticks to domain names only.
What about subfolders and pages then? How does it behaves with those? Say I've a site structured like this:
https://www.domain.com
https://www.domain.com/page1 And for each of my pages, I've an automatic canonical link ending with a slash.
Eg. rel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/page1/" /> for the above page. SEM Rush flags this as a canonical error. But is it exactly?
Are all my canonical links wrong because of that slash? And as subsidiary question, both domain.com/page1 and domain.com/page1/ are accessible. Is it this a mistake or it doesn't make any difference (I've read that those are considered different pages)? Thanks!
G0 -
Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?
Our website currently has a sidebar/widget area that appears on almost all pages throughout of entire site (350 page domain). In that sidebar, we have some static links and some non-static links. Right now there are: 6 Related Post Links - Non-Static
Technical SEO | | DemiGR
1 - Call To Action - Static to a landing page
10 Calculators - Static - These calculators I think are very useful to our users (financial website). So in total 17 total sidebar links, 11 static links, and 6 which change based on the content of the page. Do you think these static links from an SEO perspective can be hurting us? Is there some sort of best practice for sidebar links in regards to quantity as well as static vs non-static? Thanks!0 -
Hreflang tags with link to redirect loop
Hi guys, I'm having a bit of an issue on a client site that I'm hoping someone can help me with. Basically, the client has two domains, one serving users in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com), showing Euro prices, and the other serving users in Northern Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/) showing £ prices. The issue I'm having is that the URL for the Northern Ireland page has a 302 on it and goes through another 2/3 301 redirects until it resolves as http://www.americanholidays.com, however it does then show the £ prices. You can see the redirect chain here: http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/?page=single&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&useragent=1&typeProtocol=11 The homepage is using the Hreflang tag, and pointing search engines to serve the http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ page to users using EN-GB as their language. The page is also using a self-referencing canonical, which I believe may negate the whole Hreflang tag anyway? My main question is - is the fact that the Hreflang for the gb_en page is pointing to a chain of redirects negatively affecting it? (I understand too many redirects are never good). Also, is the canonical negating the Hreflang? Any help/info would be great as I just can't get my head around it! Thanks guys Daniel
Technical SEO | | DanielKiely60 -
Self Referencing Links - Good or Bad?
As an agency we get quite a few of our clients come to us saying "Ooo, this company just contacted me saying they've run an SEO report on my site and we need to improve on these following things" We had one come through the other day that had reported on something we had not seen in any others before. They called them self-referencing links and marked it as a point of action should be taken. They had stated that 100% of the pages on our clients website had self-referencing links. The definition of self-referencing is when there is a link on a page that is linking to the page you are currently on. So for example you're on the home page and there is a link in the nav bar at the top that says "Home" with a link to the home page, the page you are already currently on. Is it bad practice? And if so can we do anything about it as it would seem strange from a UI point of view not to have a consistent navigation. I have not heard anything about this before but I wanted to get confirmation before going back to our client and explaining. Thanks Mozzers!
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Links under Meta Description when performing a search
Doing research for clients, I have came across seeing sites displaying hyperlinks underneath their own meta description. keywords that I have googled that result with hyperlinks displaying under meta descriptions: Google'd: iacquire (brand) bmw wheels (Beyern Wheels, position 1) aftermarket bmw wheels (MMR Wheels, position 2) These companys have hyperlinks underneath their descriptions. Anyone have any ideas why this happens or how it happens?
Technical SEO | | frnprz0 -
Is it bad to have same page listed twice in sitemap?
Hello, I have found that from an HTML (not xml) sitemap of a website, a page has been listed twice. Is it okay or will it be considered duplicate content? Both the links use same anchor text, but different urls that redirect to another (final) page. I thought ideal way is to use final page in sitemap (and in all internal linking), not the intermediate pages. Am I right?
Technical SEO | | StickyRiceSEO1 -
Do web pages have to be linked to a menu?
I have a situation where people search for terms like, say 1978 one dollar bill. Even though there never was a 1978 one dollar bill. I want to make a page to capture these searches but since there wasn't such a thing as a one dollar bill I don't want it connected to the rest of my content which is reality based. Does that make sense? Anyway, my question is, can I publish pages that aren't linked to my menu structure but that will be searchable or, am I going to have to figure out a way to make these oddball pages accessible through my menu?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0