Pretty Link Pro Review – A Necessary Plugin For Every Affiliate Marketer

In this review I will be taking an in-depth look at a plugin called Pretty Link Pro.

In my opinion, Pretty Link Pro (PLP from now on), is a quintessential plugin for anyone who is serious about creating a clean and easy to use WordPress website. It is a plugin that I have personally used and am still using. In fact, there isn’t a single link on this entire website that isn’t a “Pretty Link”.

I started out with the free version of Pretty Link, which is good, but the Pro version has so many more great features that it didn’t take me too long to upgrade. To be honest, I haven’t even made full use of everything the Pro version offers, but I am looking forward to implementing all of its features as I continue to build out my websites.

Anyways, enough of that, let’s get into the meaty part of this review. I will begin by looking at all of the great things about PLP, as well as a couple negatives to keep it honest, followed by an overview of everything you will get, who should consider purchasing this plugin, the training resources available, the support, and finally the pricing options available to you.

What I Like

“Pretty-fies” All Links

The reason Pretty Links Pro is called “pretty links” is because it allows you to make all of your link URLs much easier on the eye. This is especially useful when you are linking to a URL that is long or has way too many random numbers, slashes, letters, etc.

In addition, it can make your links, even if they are outgoing, to appear as your domain name. For example, if you hold your cursor over this link taking you to Google.com, it will show up as “kirbysmarketing.com/GoogleSearch” as opposed to google.com.

Here is an example of a more complicated link being “pretty-fied”:

I know this is a minor thing, but it really does put that finishing touch on a website. Most of your guests probably won’t even notice, but subconsciously it comes across as a clean, well put together website. No one likes dealing with links that are a billion characters long!

Easy And Intuitive To Use

PLP is also very easy to learn and simple to use. The process of creating a pretty link is intuitive and smooth. All you need to have is a target URL and an idea for what you want the pretty link to be. If you have that, it’s just a couple of mouse clicks until you have your pretty link.

Implementing your pretty links can be done with a single click of the mouse using PLP’s built in “copy” button. Just click the symbol, find your link, press paste, and it’s done. It’s as simple as that!

Great For Affiliate Marketers

If you are an affiliate marketer, you definitely need to be using PLP. There are a couple reasons for this.

1. Affiliate links are usually pretty long and ugly and often have weird symbols, questions marks, and even sometimes your name in them. You don’t really want to put all of this out there for everyone to see if you don’t have to. So, instead of this link to a page where someone can purchase a basketball: “sportsstore.com/shop/sports/basketballs/item_28968437/purchase?kirbysmarketing” you can simply have this: “kirbysmarketing.com/basketballs”!

Now, when someone clicks on that link, you will still get credit for the sale. PLP simply redirects the clicks from the pretty link to your affiliate link.

2. Using PLP gives you the option to attach a “no follow” tag to all of your links. Remember, affiliate links aren’t really favorites of Google and other search engines. In fact, if your site is inundated with affiliate links, it will likely really damages your rankings.

One way to limit the damage done by affiliate links is to tag them as “no follow”. This means that the Google (and other search engines) bots that periodically scan your site are not allowed to follow that particular link. If they can’t follow it, they don’t know where it’s going and they don’t know what kind of link it is. If they don’t know any of this information, they can’t knock your site for having affiliate links.

Disclaimer: using PLP doesn’t give you an excuse to litter affiliate links all over your site, it just gives you one more tool to create a better reader experience, which, in turn, gives you better rankings and more sales.

Multiple Redirection Types

PLP offers many different redirection types for your links, some more useful than others. Basically, any situation you might find yourself in, there is a pretty link for you. There are different types of redirects, cloaking abilities, pretty bar, etc.

Groups

As your website continues to grow, you will have more and more links to keep track of and organized. One way PLP really helps you in this is by allowing you to create groups. Each group can contain an unlimited number of pretty links. Groups are really handy for sorting your links, searching for links, creating split tests, and keeping everything in order.

Stats, Tracking, & Reporting

While PLP doesn’t provide you with the most aesthetically pleasing statistic reports, it does track and report metrics vital to the success of your website, such as how many hits each link has had in a certain period of time. You can also see how well your split tests are performing. There’s nothing super radical about the information provided to you, but it’s all you need to know to be able to evaluate where you are/aren’t getting clicks and how well your links are converting.

Split Testing

Aside from making all of my links pretty, I think the ability to split test my links sets PLP apart from similar plugins. In a matter of a few clicks I can have a split test up and running with super fast preliminary results (assuming people are actually clicking on the link I’m testing).

Along with the ease of setting up a split test, you are also able to access basic reports that make it very clear how your links are converting.

Automatic Keyword Replacement

This is a feature I haven’t utilized yet as it doesn’t really fit my website and what I’m about. However, if I’m ever in a place where I want to replace a specific word or phrase throughout my entire website, this feature will save me hours and hours of time.

All you have to do is decide which phrase you want linked, insert the link you want it to be directed to, and viola! Each and every occurrence of that phrase anywhere on your website is now a hyperlink! Super simple, super fast

What I Don’t Like

Dashboard Runs Slowly At Times

I’m not sure how much of this is the PLP dashboard within WordPress, or just WordPress in general, or maybe my personal internet connection being inconsistent. But, at times, it seems like the PLP dashboard runs a bit slower than other aspects of WordPress. This is definitely not a deal breaker, just a bit of a nuisance at times.

Some Unuseful/Unnecessary Features

While I appreciated PLP’s effort to provide lots of cool features, some of them, particularly the Pretty Bar, are not very useful. In fact, using the Pretty Bar could get you kicked out of some affiliate programs! So, if you decide to use that feature, you need to be very careful about when and where you use it.

Some of the other redirect types are very specific and will only be applicable to you in a extremely precise situation.

Product Overview

Now I am going to give you a very detailed look into everything you will receive upon installing and purchasing the Pretty Link Pro plugin. I’m simply going to work my way through all of the menus and will let the screenshots to a majority of the work in this section. I’ll give a brief description of each as necessary.

Add New Link

Here is where you actually create your pretty links. You can see it is pretty (no pun intended) simple. All you need to do is insert your target URL, what you want your Pretty Link to look like, give it a title and choose a group for organization purposes. Those are the very basic aspects. If you’re “prettifying” an affiliate link you probably want to make it a “no follow” link. There are lots of other options as well.

Here’s a look at the advanced options when creating your Pretty Link.

Groups

Assigning each of your Pretty Links to a relevant group will make organizing and locating your affiliate links much, much easier, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of links to keep track of.

Hit Tracking

Here you can see exactly how many times each of your links has been “hit”, or clicked. You have to be a little careful here, especially if it’s a new link or you don’t have much traffic, because it doesn’t distinguish between clicks you make and clicks others make.

Tools

These are some basic tools you can use to modify and streamline your PLP experience. I haven’t done too much with these yet, but I’m sure they’d be helpful if I can ever spend the time to learn how to best utilize them.

Link Options

PrettyBar Options

Reporting Options

Keyword & URL Replacement Options

Page And Post Options

Twitter Options

Social Network Options

Public Link Creation Options

Global Options

That’s it, everything you get access to! Haha, it just seems like a lot of boring menus, but those boring menus will make your life easier and your website prettier!

Check out this image to see every feature you will get with PLP:

Who It Pretty Links Pro For?

I think PLP can be useful for anyone who is using WordPress, especially affiliate marketers. It will allow you to cloak your affiliate links and tag them as “no follow” links, both critical functions for affiliate marketers.

Even if you’re not an affiliate marketer, but are looking to simplify your link structures and make external links more appealing, then PLP is also a definite must for you!

Training Overview

There are six free training videos that come along with PLP (they’re accessible even with the free version). They walk you through the basics of everything you need to know to get started using PLP efficiently. Here are the six videos:

• Getting Started with Pretty Link on your WordPress Website
• Setting Up Pretty Link Redirects
• Organizing Your Links With Pretty Link Groups
• Advanced Link Options
• Tracking Hits On Your Pretty Links
• Pretty Link Global Options

Upon purchasing PLP you will have access to an extensive User Manual that walks you through the more advanced and complicated features.

In addition, since PLP is a fairly popular plugin, there is an abundance of video tutorials on YouTube.

Price

PLP has two pricing options available for you to consider.

Blogger Edition – $37

This option is a one-time fee that will allow you to have access to PLP on only one website for life.

Developer Edition – $97

Likewise, this option is a one-time fee, but will allow you to install PLP on an unlimited number of websites and client websites for life

Both of these options offer a lifetime of automatic updates as well as one year of Premium Support.

Obviously, if you only have one website, and never plan to have more than three, the Blogger Edition is for you. However, if you have, or are planning to have, multiple websites, or if you have lots of client websites, then the Developer Edition is definitely the way to go! Heck, even if you just have one website right now, it is probably a good idea to consider the Developer Edition so you are prepared to expand in the future.

Final Verdict

In conclusion, if you’re not yet using Pretty Link Pro, you need to be. If I was going to suggest any plugin to make your life easier, as well as improve your users’ experiences, it would be PLP. It has been well worth my investment and will continue to pay for itself over and over.

If you haven’t yet, head on over and check out PLP here.

Finally, if you have any questions or comments regarding PLP, please drop me a comment below or send me a message through my contact page.

P.S. If you’re new to this whole website business, please check out Wealthy Affiliate University. It is a great training resource with a superb community where you will learn everything you need to know about building a profitable online business. It is where I’ve learned everything I know. If it wasn’t for what I have learned/continue to learn at Wealthy Affiliate, I wouldn’t be making a growing profit from my website each month!