Shortened URLs ??

[adamxj2]

Anyone have any insight into how shortened URLs affect SEO?

I use Bitly occasionally for shortened links and was curious if this matters for any reason at all?? I basically use it so I can fit the links in places where long URLs look absurd...mostly social media platforms.

I know there's some debate over whether the domain name affects ranking or not. Frankly, that all just goes over my head.

Any thoughts welcomed!

[MoosaHemani]

I agree with sir here as most people consider these URLs are spammed but yeah normally good shorten URLs are 302 so there is no impact of it on the original URL you want your audience to land on!

Just a quick participation!

[EGOL]

Lots of people dislike shortened URLs because they can't determine the destination.  They do not trust them.  I don't click them.

[adamxj2]

Thanks so much for the thorough response!

I am mainly using Bitly for Tweets - basically for character count purposes. I don't assume any of the companies I tweet for will ever go viral, so I will be sure to curb my use of them.

[Dezzign]

Hello Adam, They most certainly can affect your site's SEO. Every time you create or distribute one of your Bitly shortened URL's you're creating a 301 redirect (From Libya) back to your site. Using Url shorteners is also a spam tactic too. Spammers get their URL shortened by every Url shortening service on the net as a means of sending links back to their sites. It's a very easy way to get 100's of new links pretty quickly, but don't expect the money site to last for long.

On domains I care about, I always try to keep the threshold of 301's against my domain name very low. If my domain is two years old and only has one inbound 301 pointing to it, then I have done my job. You must understand that 301's are one of the most sacred black hat tactics. The minute your domain begins to accumulate an above average amount of inbound 301's expect trouble.

Some sites have 1000's of 301's from legitimate domain migrations because they moved their huge eCommerce site from one domain to another. Google understands this, however, lately even these legitimate authority sites are having trouble maintaining their rankings after domain migrations. Having scores of inbound 301's from URL shorteners isn't optimal in my opinion.

As always, there are exceptions to the rule and it applies to social media in this scenario. If you Tweet a shortened version of your Url and the Tweet goes viral, then it's a little different. If the Tweet gets embedded in 1000's of sites Twitter feeds because they retweeted your tweet, then it's good to have a heap of inbound 301's. It now sounds contradictory I know. But Google can tell the difference, and more often than not, a viral Tweet often spreads to high-quality sites.

The short version of this answer is that 301's are used heavily by dark grey hat Seo's. The less inbound 301's to your domain, the better.