If you use affiliate links especially in this day and age, you’ve probably asked the question what redirect should I use on affiliate links?
Recently I talked about how to use Amazon’s affiliate program, and part of that was using the free version of the WordPress plugin Pretty Links to create more attractive and disguised presentations of said affiliate links.
Note that I don’t mean disguised in the sense that you should be misleading about your affiliate links as you should be clear in your content and terms of service that you’re using affiliate links.
Instead I mean it in the sense of not using the blatantly Amazon sourced link(s).
As I covered in my post on 301 vs 302 vs 307 post, there are a variety of types of redirect statuses you can use when creating a redirect.
In this article, we’ll answer the question of what redirect should I use on affiliate links.
What Redirect Should I Use on Affiliate Links?
The best redirect to use on affiliate links is a 307.
Incidentally, this is also why Pretty Links is helpful, because most affiliate links by their very nature are subject to change and temporary.
So why is 307 the best?
Say you find a product you like and want to recommend to your website’s audience. You sign up to be an affiliate for the product and get your unique affiliate link and share it with your audience.
You may link to that product dozens of times, not only on your site but on your email list, social networks, etc.
It’s all fine and well until say the affiliate link format changes on the product owner’s end. Or maybe you just find another similar product which you think would be even better in that same spot.
But now you have to go back to all of those places to update the link URL to reflect the NEW affiliate link format or product.
With Pretty Links, you can create a pretty link for that affiliate link and instead use THAT link everywhere you want to promote the product.
Then, if something changes like I just mentioned with the link, all you need to do is go into your Pretty Links plugin section of your site and update the destination URL of that pretty link accordingly.
Now every single instance of that link has been updated with one change, saving you tons of time of going into every platform to update those links.
And it turned out that that affiliate link was indeed temporary and subject to change, which is why the 307 designation is ideal.
As a quick aside before we wrap this up regarding what redirect should you use on affiliate links, remember to also set your affiliate links as “sponsored links” which you can also easily do in Pretty Links.
I cover this more in my post on nofollow vs sponsored links, so check that out for more context on how to designate your affiliate links.