Why does everyone use bitly?
-
Why do people use bitly? I thought it was just a way to share a link on twitter if the link was too long in url.
I see SeoMoz shares all their content with a bitly link. Even when they share it on Google+. Why?
-
sometimes you need to not worry about if/then SEO factors because that's how we end up falling into magic trick traps. Sometimes it's truly more valuable to allow other reasons to be the decider.
-
I'm a bit skeptical of using bit.ly. When someone does a 301 redirect some of the link juice gets lost, not ,much but some. Using a shortner will 301 the user. As Alan stated bit.ly is great for tracking and keeping your tweets within character limit.
Please don't quote me on this but Google has their own shortner goo.gl, perhaps Google's shortner will pass all the juice...
-
there are many ways to track traffic, however if you use a shortener service like bitly, you get a shorter URL for easier / cleaner distribution, you can rapidly evaluate a specific URL's performance tied directly to a specific marketing campaign method, and when other people spread that shortened link, it's just as effortless to track click-through for that specific initiative regardless of how many times that is shared. Much easier than digging into analytics and setting up unique campaigns.
It is of course, far from perfect, and there are many ways to get the data - bitly is just one and it's handy. Especially with the functionality of generating the unique shortened URL on the fly which is much faster than setting up custom tracking campaigns in GA.
-
Can't you use google analytics to determine people are coming to your site?
-
bitly is one of the most well established shortener services available. They provide click-through data across several data points. This helps site owners track the relative success or shortcomings of content they wish to promote, and can be used to determine what works and what doesn't from a marketing and promotion perspective.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity. We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | smontunnas1 -
Best use of an old domain?
I've discovered that my clients website used to have another domain name, which they still own but don't use. It's doing OK considering its not been used for a few years - almost 6,000 backlinks showing on Majestic. So what's the best way of using this for SEO? I'm presuming some kind of redirecting? A simple redirect of everything on the domain to the new domain index page? Or going trough all the old pages and redirecting them one by one?
Technical SEO | | abisti20 -
Google lists eBay.au number one for vertical garden and their sellers are using my IMAGES
Is there anyway of getting Google to slap eBay with a loss of page rank ? eBay.au has number one position for vertical garden in google.com.au. (search 9000). Fair enough I suppose because they are delivering a huge range of vertical garden products BUT the sellers are using images for their products that are not showing their products. Most of the sellers are flogging China copies - and I mean these are really bad copies. But what angers me even more is some of their top sellers are using MY IMAGES. They have taken my images used on a UK website and have reused them in AUstralia. Sellers have even rebranded my images. GRRRRR Is there some international sin bin where I can name and shame? Does Google care about such matters?
Technical SEO | | GardenBeet0 -
Does image domain name matter when using a CDN?
Has anyone does studies on using a different CDN domain name for images on a site? Here is an example:
Technical SEO | | findwellor ![](<a)http://cdn.mydomain.com/image.jpg> mydomain.com ranks highly and many images show up in Google/Bing image searches. Is there any actual data that says that using your real domain name for the CDN has benefits versus the default domain name provided by the CDN provider? On the surface, it feels like it would, but I haven't experimented with it.
0 -
Do You Have To Have Access to Website Code to Use Open Graph
I am not a website programmer and all of our websites are in Wordpress. I never change the coding on the backend. Is this a necessity if one wants to use Open Graph?
Technical SEO | | dahnyogaworks0 -
NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages: However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling. Any thoughts would be appreciated! DyWRP.png
Technical SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI0 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Starting a new product, should we use new domain or subdomain
I'm working with a company that has a high page rank on it's main domain and is looking to launch a new business / product offering. They are evaluating either creating a subdomain or launching a brand new domain. In either case, their current site will link contextually to the new site. Is there one method that would be better for SEO than the other? The new business / product is related to the main offering, but may appeal to different / new customers. The new business / product does need it's own homepage and will have a different conversion funnel than the existing business.
Technical SEO | | gallantc0