Few technical-SEO worries are as persistent as this one: ‘If I cloak my affiliate links, will I quietly wreck my page speed and tank my Core Web Vitals?’ Here is the direct answer before anything else.
Does link cloaking hurt Core Web Vitals? No, not when it is done correctly. Link cloaking uses a redirect that fires after a visitor clicks and leaves the page, so it has no direct effect on the Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint or Cumulative Layout Shift of the page the link lives on. The real risk is not cloaking itself.
Continue reading “Link Cloaking vs. Core Web Vitals: Hiding Links without Sacrificing Speed”