If you arrived at the step to add links to your Instagram accounts so you can drive traffic to your offers, then this safe linking guide is a must to be applied if you want to keep your accounts in good standing, avoiding flags and bans.
From the CPA and PPI networks you can get raw links to the offers you can then promote, some of them are also giving links to pre-made landing pages where you can direct your visitors. Up to this point this is all good news, you have lots of offers to choose from and you can easily grab the links and start promoting.
However, not many know that these links are already over-spammed in most of the popular social networks by other marketers before us, resulting in most of these links being flagged and blacklisted by these social networks, and finally, will lead to also flagging your social accounts.
This guide will show you how to avoid this and keep your accounts safe, so you can promote for an extended time while keeping your costs low.
You must always avoid placing the direct link to CPA offers and PPI landing pages in account bio, as Instagram is scanning the page source and will flag your accounts. The solution is to use a pre-lander before your offers and landing pages, as a wall to prevent Instagram detecting those final CPA/PPI links.
You can do this by using one of the following methods:
- Account bio -> Own domain -> Shortener -> Your offer.
- Account bio -> Web 2.0 pre-lander -> Shortener -> Your offer / Final landing page.
- Account bio -> Social media account -> Shortener -> Your offer / Final landing page.
The point here is to prevent IG reading the CPA/PPI offer link. After landing on the page, IG will scan it, and if it finds a shortener (not automatically redirected), it will not follow the shortener and will remain unaware of your final CPA/PPI link.
Another key point is to limit the number of IG accounts pointing to the same link in bio. Instagram follows redirects, so placing dozens of shorteners pointing to the same page will not work, thus you must keep this number at maximum 5 accounts pointing to the same link. When I say the ‘same link’ I’m referring to the page where Instagram users will land after they click on the bio link, because this is where the Instagram crawler will land also.
Explanation of links:
- Own domain: When you register your domain, host it, and upload a landing page or email capture page to it.
- Web 2.0 pre-lander: A free blog where you can inform visitors to continue to your offer or final landing page. Weebly, Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, etc.
- Social media account: Although self-explanatory, this can be a Facebook page, Google plus page or Twitter post pointing to the offer/final LP.
- Shortener: Services which shorten long url links. Bit.ly, Owl.ly, Goo.gl, Tiny.url, etc.
