Update: Gocodes plugin is no more available in WordPress plugin repo. You can use ThirstyAffiliate which is the best or PrettyLinkPro.
WordPress offers many ways by which we can hide our affiliate links and make them look pretty. In this post I will talk about one such WordPress plugin call “Gocodes WordPress plugin” which will help you to hide and keep a track of no. of clicks on your affiliate link.
Few days back I told you guys that I have taken blogging as full time profession. So I had to make sure, I have to make more money now and more over I have to remove my dependency from Adsense to multiple advertising network. With time, I have learned, Affiliate marketing is one of the best way to make money via Blogging and more over if you understand how affiliate marketing works, you can make more money with Affiliate programs.
Usually affiliate links look pretty ugly, For bloggers such affiliate links are normal, but for newbie’s or non techy people such links look like spam. So I was searching for any free WordPress plugin which will help me to hide my affiliate links, without editing .htaccess.
There are many tutorials which describe how anyone can hack .htaccess to edit affiliate link. Luckily I got my hands on easiest and simple Wp plugin. GoCodes wordpress plugins, is simple wordpress plugin which hide your affiliate link and make them look like a simple link.
How to use Gocodes WordPress plugin?
There are two main reasons, I recommend this plugin
- Make ugly affiliate links look pretty
- Helps in maintaining SEO of your site
- Download the plugin
- Unzip and upload the wordpress plugin to your wordpress plugins folder
- Activate the plugin from plugin folder under wordpress plugin option. (How to Install WordPress Plugin)
- Navigate to Settings >Gocodes Settings and change the default /go/ code to some thing like recommended.
Gocodes WordPress Plugin setting
Make sure nofollow box is checked. Nofollow tag will stop passing on the link juice to your affiliate links. I also recommend you to edit your WordPress robots.txt file and add your “URL trigger“, as disallow.
Remember, too many affiliate links can bring negative search engine impact, but Gocodes WordPress plugin makes this easy, as your links will be under your domain and with default Nofollow attributes.
Now, this was set up part. And now lets see how we can convert links into Gocodes link:
Under your WordPress dashboard, Navigate to Tools> Gocodes
- Redirect Key: Name of the product or your own imaginative name
- Example : ThirstyAffiliates
- Target URL : URL on which the user will be redirected
- Example :https://www.shoutmeloud.com/recommended/ThirstyAffiliates/
Final output : https://www.shoutmeloud.com/recommended/AddmeFast/
There is an option in Gocodes WordPress plugin, which let you count hits on your affiliate cloaked URL’s. By default, check box is not checked so you have to check it manually every time you create a link. Monitoring your link stats, will help you to analyze the effective-ness of your promotion. Here is a video tutorial to learn using Gocodes plugin:
If you are using SEO smart link, you can make it very effective by setting up auto linking feature. Though, I won’t recommend it so much, as it may give bad user experience. Anyways, I have been using this plugin to cloak affiliate links and make them look pretty. And so far, in free segment this is one of the best plugin for link cloaking.One feature which I always missed in Gocodes plugin is feature to import and export cloaked affiliate URL’s. This will be handy for bloggers like me who have multiple blogs running Gocodes plugin.
Do let us know which WordPress plugin do you use to cloak your affiliate URL? Have you used Gocodes WordPress plugin? Would you recommend it to other WordPress users?
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Thanks for sharing this wonderful information Harsh! We are using ThirstyAffiliate and it is awesome.
Hi Harsh,
Thanks for sharing those great plugins, I am looking for something which will redirect every simple link to affiliate link of OMGPM or Vcomission. I have used Cuelink however the tracking system of them seems doubtful as I send a lot of visitors however sales are not convincing and I am looking to change the redirection using OMGPM(Optimisemedia) or Vcomission for Indian Affiliate networks.
Hello
Harsh I think shoutmeloud a book of blogging and everyday I learn new trick about blogging, thanks again
Harsh, I had Go codes from an year ago. It’s still installed and is working. Do I have to uninstall and delete it because of the fact that it is removed from WP repo? Any bugs or vulnerabilities?
If so, how could I export the stuff to another alternative plugin?
Cheers.
I had the same query and would love to hear from you, Harsh.
Thanks.
I heard Matt Cutt saying any type of cloaking is against search engine. How could cloaking affiliate links is not against guidelines?
Hi Harsh. Thanks for all your help. I am following you and my website quality and speed has increased tremendously.
For Gocodes plugin. I have affiliate network through third party affiliates (OMGPM, PAYOOM, CUELINKS etc). How to use these codes here and for Particular single website Aff like Flipkart.
Thanks
Great post! It’s another learning method about WordPress Plugins to Cloak Affiliate Links. This is very helpful and useful for the bloggers. I learned and many great ideas here. Thanks for sharing this…!!
Hi,
Thanks for this article and the gocode plugin.
I thought that the go redirection is a paid plugin.
regards
vinodh
Thanks Harsh for sharing such a nice plugin to hide affiliate links. Well, I will surely give it a try for my blog 🙂
hi harsh. tnx for kind information. reading this post i also installed the gocode plugins and did according to this posts nut either i got confused or was unable to do what exactly we should do with this plugin. could you suggest me more please
@Bigyan
This video will answer all your questions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VvY55HG3mE&feature=youtube_gdata
Hay affiliated links shows 404 error. I think this is because of WP Super Cache plugin. But i have deactivate this plugin still it shows 404 pages
@Mankesh
There must be some conflict with other plugin else I have never seen such issue. Have you resolved the issue? Could you please come back and share the solution with others.
Nice information for bloggers like me and i am in found of this websites but reading all these interesting stuff ,I will shout loud i can make money from my blog in future
Thanks
Hello..
I have also heard of the Pretty Link a link cloacker plugin for WP. So can you suggest which one is better…Pretty link or the Gocodes.
Also how do we make the affiliate link look good through this plugin…?
Thanks for sharing this info, i was really looking for this kind of tool to make the affliate link more beautiful.
Once again Thanks.
Salam.
This plugin hasn’t been updated for over 2 years. Do you have any better one which tracks clicks?
But this plugin no more work now 🙁
Any alternatives ?
@Chandramani
It’s working fine for me with latest version of WordPress. (3.6.1)
Hi Harsh,
I started using GoCodes on one of my blogs but even after selecting the check-box for Nofollow in the settings, I don’t see this attribute added to my aff. links… can you please help me with this?
@Amandeep in that case you can take help of robots.txt. I use /recommend/ , and added it in Robots.txt. Not the best method, but still workable.
Thanks for your reply, Harsh. I am already using this as well in robots.txt (I use /ref/ key)
Bit weird but in any case, Gocodes should be adding nofollow attribute, right – what could be causing this issue? Now, the issue is, even after trying both these things today I did a quick search in Google and found my affiliate links are indexed in Google…! What would you suggest apart from this – should I remove these manually from Webmaster tools?
Thanks,
Aman
@Aman
If you have stopped crawling of /ref/ from robots.txt, you can go to Webmaster tool > URL removal tool
and use domain.com/ref/ and remove the directory instead of individual link to get rid of such indexed links.
Hi Harsh
I have tried this Plugin but Its not working in my WP site. I don’t Know why?
Manish
Hi Manish
What problem are you facing?
Are you able to generate shortcode for your aff URL:
Like shoutmeloud.com/go/bluehost ?
Let me know where are you stuck and I will give you a helping hand..
Thank you for your reply harsh here is my problem
Well when I am trying to cloak my link using gocodes plugin I am getting the message 404 errror
Manish can you show me example of one such cloaked link?
Will be helpful for me to diagnose the problem.
I think Gocodes is one of the most valuable plugin on wp. I am also using this. Thanks for share.
Looks like a great plugin. The thing that I like about this plugin is that it tells the no. of hits.
Gocodes is a good wordpress plugin. I had not heard of this plugin before but seems like it can do without paying for a cloaker. Thanks for this information.
I have just installed Redirection Plugin for Affiliate. But its sounds cool. And simple too.
BTW is it necessary to Deindex a affiliate link?
It will be good to deindex such links. But no search engines will index a 301 redirected url. nofollow is essential.
I’ve been using this for a while and totally love it 🙂 Although I regret that after the visitor gets forwarded, the actual URL is shown on the browser lol