Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics
-
Hello,
One of my clients has a Facebook page for his company, and his social media manager posts some promotional and educational posts on daily basis. the social media manager uses affiliate ID's in the destination URL to track traffic and leads that come from the social media and to make it look nicer he uses shortcut links service - bitly.
Now I have a few questions about this:
-
I don't see traffic comes from bit.ly or bitly.com in Google Analytics, my question: is using 301 redirect makes Google Analytics understand that the last website which sent the traffic to my website is not the actual Referral website?
-
Is using shortcut links in the social media damages the links value (even though they are <nofollow>links - but still considered as signals from social media</nofollow>
Thanks.
-
-
You don't see traffic from bit.ly as they actually redirect the user without serving any content, therefore is just a redirection, instead, you should see the actual referrer, facebook, or whatever. However, if you are getting the hit from a facebook page, it is probably an HTTPS page, and therefore, if redirected to a non-SSL page referrer information isn't passed along. However, you could see something like facebook.com/u.php?.... You should use Analytics tracking variables to better understand from which posts are those visitors coming: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
As for your second question, just like you can interpret the redirection, so can Google or whatever search engine scrapes the page looking for signals. It won't matter if you pass them through bit.ly or services alike, the link ends up in your site (as long as there's a 300 redirection in place, which it is in bit.ly).
Hope that helps!
-
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
-
Are NoFollow Links a Waste of time?
I share links to my blog on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram. However, my links on social media sites are NoFollow Links. Do No Follow links help my Search Ranking or is it a waste of time to share my content on Social Media? Ytellsocial
Social Media | | Ytellsocial0 -
Twitter Analytics
We are looking for top engagers for one of our clients - anyone know of any good resources besides twitter analytics and followerwonk?
Social Media | | CGR-Creative0 -
How to recover Google+ business page if it gets deleted by mistake ?
Hi, i have a client who has by mistakenly deleted its G+ business page which is having good expousre on Google+. he got worried how to recover it . even i don't know how to do it. any help or discussion for the solution would be appreciated Thanks,
Social Media | | ShaunPhilips0 -
How can I find the most liked, tweeted, and +1'd URLs on a domain?
As part of a content audit, I'd like to identify the most popular content on a domain. I've tried Google Spreadsheets + API's from the services, but the call limits have stopped me as I can only check 50 URLs at a time. Does anyone have any tips on how to do this? I can get the list of all pages on the site with Screaming Frog, but then how do I find metrics on those URLs? Any tips or tools would be appreciated!
Social Media | | brianspatterson0 -
Please help me improve this link building strategy
Link building is challenging. Can you guys read my process below and offer improvements: This is for marketing an article that is good for target websites for humanitarian reasons. It helps their readers in a way that they really need it. Not to say that all of these target websites are going to want to reference my article. I'm looking for A. The target website to write, or let us write, a blog post around my article, of course with a link to the article and no other links to my website (unless they want to) or B. For our article to be listed in a resource section when appropriate How I'm doing this now: 1. We're starting with a well written, authoritative article with attractive images, graphs, and even a fancy javascript display area that's useful. The article is 3500 words. There's a big image link at the bottom that goes to the article in PDF version. Due to some hosting problems, the pdf version is disallowed in the robots.txt (it won't help to get links to it) There's 2 versions of the article, the one I'm marketing has all of our ecommerce menu and such removed, so that this version has minimal commercial parts in it. There's also a commercial version, which we are not pushing, and the non-commercial is rel cononicaled pointing over to the commercial. The non-commercial article has only one external backlink so far, and the commercial version has no external backlinks yet. We're just getting started. 2. First I like on facebook and follow on twitter. I spend some time with the target site's facebook page and like several recent posts, sharing one or two things to my own facebook page. I then retweet two good recent tweets put out by the site's general twitter account. BTW, we don't have very many twitter followers yet for our twitter account. 3. Then I read their newest blog post. I read it thoroughly. Sometimes I don't pick the newest if there is another recent one that is more similar in topic to our site. I spend some time putting together a thoughtful and helpful comment for that blog post. I submit the comment. I then go on FB and carefull post how I found the blog post helpful and place a link to their blog post. A lot of these sites, though, aren't accepting blog post comments but I always post on their facebook page. 4. I wait a couple of days in case my activity gets noticed. At that point, I go to linkedin and look for people that work for the site. If I find a content/marketing director, or if it's a small site and I find the owner [still not very good at this part], I search google for their email address and/or twitter account. I'm successful in finding a specific person only about 1/3 of the time. These sites also often have phone numbers. 5. I send out either A. a tweet to a specific person asking if they need help with content, or B. An email to a specific person like: Subject: Do you need help with content that is very useful to [niche audience] [their first name] I hope you are doing well. [add sentence here referencing something I learned about them, I don't know how to do this part well yet] I'm writing you because we have some content that is useful and important to [niche audience]. It's an article about [our article name and link]. We're wondering if you'd consider, since it would be very beneficial to your audience, to write a blog post explaining and citing that article. We think our doing this would add to [niche audience] quality of life. Sincerely, Bob Weikel
Social Media | | BobGW
Co-owner
[website] If I don't find a specific person, I write an email as similar to the above as possible and send it to their general email address or contact form. I send one email, wait 2 or 3 business days, send another email, wait 2 or 3 business days. Then I call. I ask for "Marketing" or whoever is in charge of their blog [I haven't done much of this and am not good at it yet] or if it's a small company I might talk to the owner. Sometimes I only send one email before calling, especially if I think email's a lost cause. I never leave voicemail. I always keep calling over several days until I reach someone. When I call and get someone, I say something like, "Hi, I'm Bob from [website]. I was wondering if you would be interested in some content that would be beneficial to [niche audience]." I know there is a lot of room for improvement. I'm looking for a 10% success rate. Thanks.1 -
Google analytics now showing social signals
Looking through Google analytics today and noticed that there is a section under top content that shows number of Facebook likes & shares, tweets, diggs, delicious book marks, etc. Anyone else seeing this? [staff note: see answers, this came from a Chrome extension]
Social Media | | prima-2535090 -
Is there anyway for redirected links to still provide SEO value?
I help a site that helps spread word by getting links on peoples social media pages. These links are truncated ie website.com/XyUE for the purposes of tracking clicks, referrals and so forth. I have heard that when a link is in a redirect form like that it loses close to all, if not completely all of its link value. The links themselves are technically 301's. Do these still maintain value? For example, the stopped.at links on this person's twitter. http://twitter.com/#!/Melewis18 Is there any way to make links of this type maintain SEO value? Is there a workaround to truncating for tracking purposes?
Social Media | | MarloSchneider0
