Switching to masked affiliate links

[FabRag]

Hi there,

I run a content affiliate website where I introduce products in articles and then link to merchants where the user can buy the respective product. Currently I am using regular affiliate links here with the "nofollow" attribute.

With growing size of the site, I would like to switch to masked affiliate links, so instead of a link like "jdoqocy.com/click-123" I want to use "mydomain.com/recommend/123".

My question here is: When switching to masked affiliate links, does it makes sense to also convert all the older unmasked affiliate links? If yes, what would be the best way to do that - Convert all old links at once or convert them over time (e.g. over a few month)?

Currently about 2/3 of my site's outbound links are unmasked, external affiliate links. So I am afraid that changing this relatively large share of links from unmasked external affiliate links to masked links doenst look natural at all...

Thank you for your advice!

[stevenmusumeche]

The first question is why do you want to mask them? To hide the destination from search engines?  If that's the reason, it won't work, because they can easily follow your redirects.  If you're just doing it for URL vanity, then I don't think it would hurt, but maybe you should just transition the newer ones over time so you don't have a massive change all at once.

[FabRag]

Hi Steve,

thanks for your advice! Yes, one reason for masking is URL vanity. The other one is to increase CTR.