10cents

Hi!

I often encounter these words "hiding your links." Does it mean hiding your links from visitors? How can it affect page ranking? And does it belong to black hat SEO? Thanks in advance.

sinamin

Hi There

I am not sure if this is the same "hiding links" to which you refer but this is what I do. I hide my links from visitors with a little extra html code. It actually only hides it in the status bar in the bottom left corner of the screen. It does not affect page rank nor is it considered black hat.

If you read the source code, you can actually see the link. It is not hidden there. But there are a couple reasons I prefer to do this. The first is I notice with some people if they think they are leaving a website, they will not click on the link worried about where it might go. So basically it gives the appearance of staying on your own website. But I do open the links in new windows so they can come back.

The other reason I do it is so people cannot see my long drawn out affiliate ID. It looks much neater to read relevant text than a long string of numbers and letters.

Lastly, I do not know this for sure but it seems to me, it might actually help the website if you use good descriptive tags. Much like alt tags for images and title tags for links, I would think these tags would be beneficial as well.

fergi

i hear that it's no good to do what sinamin is doing. i myself don't care but others think that people that use these tatics are cheating. same as hiding text with a lot of different keywords that the owner of the url wants to rank for.

sinamin

Because of the huge numbers of cheats and thieves out there, many companies recommend that affiliate links be hidden. A legitimate webmaster is only protecting his interest.

But I actually think we might be talking about 2 different things. I would agree with you fergi that if the sole purpose was to trick search engines, then it might not be right.

But what I was suggesting was more from a cosmetic and safety point of view.

I have never tested to see if it actually affects rank or position.

jimberan

You could hide the links in a certain way by taking away the underlying line from the link. This should make the content of the web page become more attractive.

10cents

I've heard about that too, masking your affiliate link. That's so people will click on your link rather bypassing it and go directly to the site (since the URL shows on the bottom part of our browser). But that's legitimate and even recommended by companies themselves so their affiliates don't get cheated.

mtajim

Yes , people hide affiliate links but moreover many people hide reciporocal links too , so that visitors dont find them but bots an easily scan them

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TryUsOut

I can get a site penalized if the hidden links are solely for the purpose to manipulate SERP. Everything done in excess is always unhealthy :D

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