Hi there!
I see your concern.
All of your affiliate links need to be no-follow and use the rel=sponsored tags.

All links that provide you some payment, compensation or commission are considered affiliate links, and need the rel=sponsored and the no follow tag.

It's all good. There is no error.

Otherwise, that WP External lLnks plugin worked well?

Rudy

I understand this, but not all external links are affiliate links. For some (e.g., those pointing to Wikipedia and other authority sites) we need only the nofollow tag, for some we need no tags at all (e.g, those pointing to my own separate sites etc).

The plugin added tags to all external links so in this sense it worked well, but I cannot keep it that way, have to deactivate it or to find out the way to avoid it acting on some links (and this is about thousands of them).

I see what you mean.
Is there no way to individually add or remove the rel=sponsored tag?

From WordPress, here's some documentation:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-external-links/
Hope that helps...

And Pretty links plugin is free to use.

I first heard about Pretty Links here, but I didn't start using it because of the name...grin...Pretty dumb reason, I know, but since using it, the plugin has been beneficial.

Rudy

Here is how the things stand with this issue. One can add those tags manually, but I have sites with thousands of posts, this means many thousands links. So in practical terms this is not possible.

On the other hand, if you use some tool that adds a piece of code (a block) in the post and this adds extra functionality like a drop-down menu with several affiliate links (I have this in several sites), then it is not possible to add any tag. You have to prepare links with the corresponding tags before adding them to such drop-down menu. However, Amazon and many other affiliate sellers do not have option to do this when you create the usual url link. But this plugin adds tags even in this block so this makes it good up to the point I mentioned already about acting on all links without exception.

Some good plugins like AAWP has added the 'sponsored' to all Amazon links, no need to do anything. But this is a special plugin and it has nothing to do with the issue you are addressing in the training.

The plugin you suggested is also in Jay's video about this same issue. But he wrongly says that you can manually remove 'sponsored' introduced by the plugin (in links to Wikipedia). As far as I know this is not possible, the plugin does these things behind the scene.

As for Pretty Links, I have never used it because it was useless, as soon as a visitor clicks on the pretty link, it shows its full ugly shape. But perhaps it is useful for this purpose here, and this only for small sites or when you use it from the very beginning. You cannot do anything with it a posteriori in a site with existing 1000 posts.

That's a bit of a quandry, isn't it?
With that many links, it sounds like a task that may take a while to complete.

Regarding Pretty links, I find the the links they provide are simplified by the 3 or 4 lettered code that comes after the domain name used. With some of my affiliates, their links were very long. Using PL turned them into smaller links that do not revert to what the original link was prior to using PL.

Not sure what happened when you tried using Pretty Links.

Rudy

Nobody memorizes urls in any case, this is why making links short or pretty makes no much sense. Try any of your pretty links and click on them, you will see that they expand after that so in my view it is pointless to make them pretty in the first place.

On the other hand, it is against Amazon rules to do such cloaking. They have their own short link option.

That's true, Amazon offers their own short link.

I've clicked on my Pretty link links and have not had that issue that you describe.

It would be good to see what you are doing. When you hover over the link it is shown in the left bottom corner on the screen as 'pretty'. When you click it leads you to the original target url and it shows in the top url bar in its full length. This is how every shortened link works. The full link must show up, otherwise it would not lead you to the target place.

I will check this out further. The links I've copied and pasted. I havenot clicked on more than a few just to ensure that it was a direct line.

Rudy

Huh...I opened a blog page and hovered over the affiliate link. In the lower left corner, I could see the link I created via Pretty Links.

When I clicked on the affiliate link, I was brought directly to the page associated with the link.

The page url does show this after the htm?: medium=affiliate.

In this case, the link was not very long.

My question is, so what? So what that you see the full link in the address bar?

We are not trying to hide that we are selling. Our posts are supposed to be transparently clear about our affiliations, and the shortened link helps with making sure whoever clicks on it is brought directly to the page.

I shorten my links to avoid not copying the entire link. I have a couple of very long links, that could become problematic if not all of the link was copied and pasted when setting the link.

What I like about Pretty Links is that all of my links are stored in one location.i don't have to hunt for them. There us a note box I can use to describe what the link is, in addition to naming the link.

The convenience of bulk editing is possible, even with the free version. One less thing for me to worry about.

If you look in the plugin library, you will find other external link plugins to use, if this wp external links plugin doesn't work for you.

Rudy

Are you sure you need to do both Rudy?
I understood Google does not penalize your site one way or the other if you just choose one.
Although Google "prefers" rel - sponsored", there is no mark down of your site if you use No-Follow for an affiliate or paid link.

A link from Moz Sept 2020.
https://moz.com/blog/nofollow-sponsored-ugc

Michael.

That link confused me more...grin.

Ideally, you wanted to mark your affiliate links as no-follow. Now, Google decided that adding the sponsored tag notifies the bots that it's an affiliate or paid link, even though the link is tagged as no follow.

I figure, that if zi tag my links with the sponsored tag, they might get followed without a no follow tag.

Who knows, eh?

Rudy

Lol.
Yeah, from what I understand, all it does is give Google a hint that it is an external link, and not to include it as a ranking factor when google spiders your site.
Unlike say, Wikipedia or some other authority site where the only option I tick is open in a new tab.
Perhaps rel-sponsored is a better option to use, as it provides a little more information to google, where as the no- follow means you straight out don't endorse the affiliate site.
And we all know that is not true. 😎 Well most of the time...

Something like that.

Michael.

Exactly...grin.

Rudy

Thanks!

Thank you!
And, you're welcome, too, Lily!

Rudy

Thanks, Israel! Appreciate you stopping by!

Rudy

That is true, Links can be updated individually. I forgot to add that! Thanks, Richard!

Rudy

You're welcome, Rudy!
:-)
Richard

Hi Jenn,

That is a great question.
Here is some information I found to answer this as simply as I can.

The rel=”sponsored” tag is a new link attribute to highlight sponsored and affiliate links.

The rel=”usg” is a new link attribute to highlight links in the user-generated content. I'm assuming this means internal links that relate to your own content in another article.

Hope that helps. Most likely there will be some answers that explain it better than I did....grin.

Rudy

Great, thank you so much, Rudy. Much appreciated.

You're very welcome!