Relationship of URL shorteners with SEO
Why use URL shorteners?
SEO practices are constantly evolving and therefore it is important to adapt the strategies of the company to maintain the impact within search engines. An important part of any plan is to share website content in an appropriate way and it is in this context that URL shorteners become extremely useful. These online tools transform traditional links and shorten them by up to 90% giving a better image when sharing links.
What are URL shorteners?
They are tools that randomly assign a series of numbers and letters that replace the URL to be shortened and this reduces its length significantly, also improving the visual appeal when sharing the page and, depending on the shortener you use, also measure the number of clicks on your link.
Find out more about URL shorteners below:
Shortener Features
The following are some of the most striking features that shorteners offer, the reasons they are used, and the customization you can achieve:
They are very useful for sharing content
There are some social networks such as Twitter that only allow publishing with a limit of characters that must include both the message and the link that redirects users to a web page. This task can be complicated, especially if it is about very wide links.
Faced with this situation, URL shorteners play an important role in reducing links significantly, giving more space to write the content of the messages.
They can monitor the traffic on your site
Some shortener options may include monitoring options, such as measuring clicks, where they came from, how many times it was shared, etc. However, it is important to remember that this data is based on the clicks given on the clipped link.
They can customize the URLs
The random letters and numbers that the shortener tool has generated are substituted so that the brand name, product or description can be used within the link.
How do you use a shortener?
Here's the correct way to use these tools:
Choosing the shortener
Review among the large number of options the shortener that best suits the needs of the company and know what its operation is, always look for shorteners that use the 301 protocol
Use the URL shortener
Using the shorteners is not usually complicated, usually just enter the link and the shortened link will automatically be generated.
Share the link
Once the link is ready, it is enough to share it through social networks, forums, etc. It is important to remember that if you want an analysis of click traffic through links, you need to use a single shortener.
Advantages and disadvantages of URL shorteners
The following advantages and disadvantages are seen from a general perspective, there may be some shorteners that do not have the same qualities or disadvantages as others.
Advantage
URL shorteners have, in addition to basic analytics, demographic data, social networks where it was shared, etc.
Ability to schedule social media posts from within the tool
Customize shortened links and set notes
Tools like TweetDeck that configure URLs to be shortened automatically
Disadvantages
If a link is expected to have a long lifespan, an external URL shortener is not a good option as the links may stop working.(branded links)
Although there is little risk that the link will be marked as spam, especially in Gmail.
People do not trust a shortened link as this is the most common method used to send viruses.
The page will take longer to open when the user has used a URL shortener to enter, instead of going to the destination site, they must first go through the redirect of the tool.