Playbook: Move 2,000 affiliate links to a cloaker without 404ing buyers

Playbook: Move 2,000 affiliate links to a cloaker without 404ing buyers

Going from raw outbound links to a cloaker (ThirstyAffiliates / Pretty Links / Affilimate-style) breaks things in two silent ways: old /go/ slugs change, and your redirect type flips.

The sequence that doesn't lose clicks:
— Inventory current outbound URLs with a crawler (Screaming Frog, export External). This is your source of truth, not the plugin's link list.
— Decide slug scheme ONCE: /recommends/brand beats /go/123 for click-through and never renames.
— Import with 302, not 301. Affiliate redirects should be temporary so the network sees fresh referrers and you can swap merchants later.
— Add rel="nofollow sponsored" at the plugin level, not per-link.
— Set up a catch-all 301 from any legacy slug to the new one for 90 days.

Gotcha: cloakers that redirect via a database query add 80-200ms per click. On a page with 15 buttons and a slow host, that's a measurable bounce. Cache the redirect map or use a flat-file cloaker.

Bottom line: crawl-export first, lock the slug scheme, 302 + sponsored, legacy 301 catch-all for 90 days.