Learn everything about link masking

With URL masking or cloaking, you hide the original URL of a web page. This can make for a seamless user experience, along with some other benefits. So what is link masking? And why should I use it?

Read on to learn all about what link masking is, its benefits, and its potential disadvantages. We’ll also tell a bit more about a good alternative for link masking, which is using vanity URLs.

What is link masking?

Link masking, also called URL masking, link cloaking, domain masking, or hiding URL, means displaying the content of one website within a 'frame' on another domain. This also means that, no matter where you click on the website in this frame, the URL in the address bar stays the same. It’s called link masking or link cloaking because the URL in the address bar isn't the actual URL of the page.

Link masking can have its benefits when using it for things such as affiliate marketing, branding, or creating more user-friendly URLs (more on that later!).

What is the difference between link masking and cloaking?

Link masking and cloaking essentially mean the same thing. They are just two different terms used for displaying a web page in a frame and showing a different URL in the address bar than the actual URL of the page visitors are viewing.

What are some common uses of link masking?

So why would you use link masking for your URL? There are several key benefits. We’ll go over them here.

In affiliate marketing, URL masking is used to hide the URLs of affiliate links. If, for example, you receive affiliate links from a bookstore for your blogs and you want to promote these online. Instead of using the original link from the bookstore, you might prefer to use link masking to create your links, as if they are part of your website. This might make the link more visually appealing for your followers and can boost click-through rates. It also ensures that the affiliate ID is not bypassed, so it will be clear how many clicks have been coming from your promotional efforts.

You can use a masked link to embed external content, such as videos, images, or infographics, in your page. The content will appear to be part of your website while it’s hosted somewhere else. Even though the link of the embedded video will not be visible at first glance, you might still prefer to use masked links to maintain a consistent branding experience across your site. Using a masked link for embedding external content can also be a plus if the video link is shareable.

A masked link can be used for links with tracking tags. Hiding the tracking tags with a masked link can give the URL a cleaner look. It can also prevent tampering since It will make it more difficult for users to manipulate or remove parameters from the URL

If your original link is long and complicated, and just isn't visually appealing, you can choose to use link masking to give it a cleaner and simpler look. This way, it can save you the trouble of changing domain names.

Some hosts provide subdomains that you can use for free. If you use link masking for these subdomains, you can make it appear as though the website that you host on the subdomain has its domain.

The disadvantages of link masking

So, as we’ve discussed above, there are several situations in which a masked link could be beneficial. But there are also some disadvantages that you’ll want to consider.

Google explicitly mentions cloaking in its spam policies. And to be eligible to appear in search results, you shouldn’t violate these. In the examples that Google mentions, cloaking is used with bad intentions, and of course that’s not always the case. But Google might not know the difference.

Another problem with domain masking is that it creates duplicate content in search engines. Google will identify the domain of your masked URL and the visited domain as duplicates. This means Google will choose one over the other, and you don’t have any influence on which one that will be. It could be the masked domain.

Linking or cloaking a link also means that your visitors won’t be able to bookmark pages.

Create vanity URLs to shorten and beautify your links

If you want to make your URL look more appealing, link masking doesn't have to be the way to go. You could create vanity URLs instead. A vanity URL is a web address that’s specifically customized to be more visually appealing and easy to remember. With a vanity URL, you customize an automatically generated URL from your website to create a more user-friendly, clean-looking link. You can then set up a redirect that points to the original URL. Vanity URLs are a good way to promote clean-looking links on social media or other media outlets.

The most important reason to choose vanity URLs over link masking is that vanity URLs won't harm your SEO. With vanity URLs, the destination URL is always visible to search engines. This is thanks to the 301 redirects that are implemented. A great benefit of 301 redirects is that they transfer almost all your link equity, or SEO authority, to the destination URL. And on top of that, the shortening of the URL can have a positive impact on SEO.

As a domain-to-domain redirect service, we specialize in redirecting vanity URLs outside of the primary domain that the redirect links to. We will ensure your vanity links provide guaranteed access to your online marketing efforts. And these redirects can be set up in just a few clicks!

Learn how to create a vanity URL

Features

Automatic HTTPS

Analytics

API

Dynamic destinations

Complex redirect rules

Global edge network

Use cases