*What is Link Cloaking?

Cloaking is a technique used to deliver the content on a Web page to a search engine in such a way that different content than what is delivered to a regular human user appears on the search engine. The goal of cloaking is to boost a website's search engine rank on certain keywords.
 
Link cloaking is a method used to make a long affiliate URL link into a shorter and prettier one—often to the detriment of a brand. One of the most common forms of link cloaking occurs when an affiliate doesn't use its own URL at all, but rather just appropriates a brand's URL without any disclosure.
 
Cloaking is basically when you show up other people's search engine bots a thing. Usually it is considered as Black Hat SEO techniques. Because people do link cloaking affiliate links because they believe that search engine bots see them fingerprints and organic SEO rankings if it will hurt there.
 
Link cloaking or masking is the technique of hiding the true destination of a hyperlink. This is done to improve CTR as visitors may feel more comfortable clicking on a friendly-looking link. There are several ways to accomplish this including using Javascript to hide or change the destination that shows in the browser's status bar, iframes or redirects. It is generally viewed as black hat but this has been debated depending on it's usage.
 
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