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If you're a blogger you're probably busy working on your craft and might not actually be up with all the lingo in the affiliate marketing world. And goodness knows we have a fair bit of indecipherable jargon to get your head around!
One of those things that many people don't understand is the “redirect type”.
When you cloak your affiliate link with a tool like ours what you're actually doing is creating a page on your website that points somewhere else. This is called a redirect.
There are a few different types of redirects and they're given code numbers:
- 301 Redirect
- 302 Redirect
- 307 Redirect
But what do they actually MEAN?!
We created a video which helps answer this important question so you can get your head around it.
Here is the low-down on what each of the redirect types actually means:
301 Redirects
This says to the visitor's browser this page has now moved to another place permanently.
The visitor’s browser will remember that this page has been moved (until the cache is cleared) so that the next time they click on it, it's going to be faster.
302 Redirects
This says we’re sending traffic to another place but not sure why. It's a temporary redirect type but depending on your server setup some browsers might actually remember it (again, until the cache is cleared) because there are some other request headers and stuff that can be sent along with it which say whether that redirect actually expires or not (even though its temporary… confusing, I know).
In any case, it just pays to remember a 302 redirect MAY be remembered by the visitor's browser.
307 Redirects
The last redirect type that ThirstyAffiliates supports is a 307 redirect. This is a temporary redirect and that says to the visitor's browser that the page is temporarily being routed to this other place instead.
307's are NOT remembered by the visitor's browser so each time they click the link, it will check with your server to see if that is still where it should be sending the person.
What redirect type should you use for cloaked affiliate links?
Now that we have the low-down on what each of the redirect types are you might be wondering which one to use and when.
This greatly depends on whether you think the link will change very often and if the visitor might be coming back to click on that link again.
If they aren't, and you don't think you'll be changing the link that often then a 301 redirect make sense.
It's faster – because it is cached by the browser after the first click – and as you may know, the speed of service is everything in the online world.
On the other hand, if you expect that your links might change fairly often then a 302 or a 307 redirect might be more appropriate.
We'd love to hear what you think of the video, there are many more tutorials in the works!
I am confused about using thirsty affiliate for my amazon affiliate website. How to do that? My amazon account will be banned? Please can you tell me in details? I wanted to purchase but one of my friend told me not to buy as i can get banned from amazon because of this plugin.
Hi Laney,
ThirstyAffiliate as of version 3 supports “Uncloaking” which means its the only link cloaker on the market that is compatible with Amazon’s associate’s program. Amazon wants to see that the link on your page is a raw direct link to their site, not via a redirect. ThirstyAffiliates can facilitate this.
It’s actually a feature in our free plugin, so you can try it out now. The uncloaking feature means that you can use ThirstyAffiliates to manage your links, insert links into your posts, etc but then show an uncloaked version of it on the front end.
We’ll have a full feature overview video on this coming out very soon 🙂 In the meantime try the feature in the free plugin.
I think whether its 301 or 302 or 307, it does not matter as long as that affiliate directory is being blocked by robots.txt
I have all affiliate urls as 302 and have disallowed them by robots.txt
Hi, I’m having some conflict issues with Thirsty Affiliates 302 redirects and a few page builder plugins. Is there a way to clear Thirty Affiliate plugin’s cache? Thanks.
301/302 links can be cached by your browser. Always make sure you test the link with an incognito/private browsing window.
Still unsure about which to use. Too many people advise against using 301.
Does the plugin automatically add the noindex tag as well to those links?
Also, do I have to add the “/recommended/” to the disallowed list on robots.txt?
I saw the automatic addition of noindex and nofollow to the link on some other plugin but not sure about the thirstyaffiliates plugin.