Shortened URLs ??
-
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!
-
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!
-
Lots of people dislike shortened URLs because they can't determine the destination. They do not trust them. I don't click them.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Ranking gone for the original page and a shortened url ranks instead.
Hi Experts!!! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year In Advance. I am been facing a issue with a few of my SERP results for "Singapore Visa" and related keyword. Until last to last Saturday i.e 16th December, I ranked for Singapore visa keyword with this url https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx !!! But since 18th December I am ranking for "Singapore Visa" keyword with this url and message below it in place of description. Singapore visa - Musafir.com
Algorithm Updates | | sainath
go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa
No information is available for this page.
Learn why The go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa redirects to https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx with some UTM parameters. The URL go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa is a shortened URL which was used for SMS marketing and all of a sudden Google has picked it in SERP instead of Singapore VIsa Landing Page. The Singapore visa Main page is not blocked by Robots.txt file. Please help me to resolve this.1 -
Is it possible (or advisable) to try to rank for a keyword that is 'split' across subfolders in your url?
For example, say your keyword was 'funny hats' - ideally you'd make your url 'website.com/funny-hats/' But what if 'hats' is already a larger category in your site that you want to rank for as its own keyword? Could you then try to rank for 'funny hats' using the url 'website.com/hats/funny/' ? Basically what I'm asking is, would it be harmful to the chances of ranking for your primary keyword if it's split across the url like this, and not necessarily in the correct order?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
Placement of /p/ in URL structure for ecommerce site product URLs
Hi, We're a discussion about how to structure a clients ecommerce site product page URLs where 12345 represent the product SKU/number: https://domain.com/Item--i-12345 https://domain.com/product-name/p/12345 https://domain.com/p/12345 It's a toss up between the second and the third URL, but the SEO company is saying the third is best because of the placement with the /p/ and creating a silo for "products" that help search engines recognize it is a product. Does anyone have thoughts on this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | AliMac260 -
How do you get a url to show as a tagline in google mobile search?
When searching in google via mobile, I am seeing urls changed to taglines. I have attached pictures that show the url in a web search, but a tag line from the mobile search. Does anyone know how to get a tagline to show in place of a url in a mobile search? Any advice would be appreciated! uLkYWRx.png wljXRI3.png
Algorithm Updates | | David-Kley0 -
Are SEO Friendly URLS Less Important Now That Google Is Indexing Breadcrumb Markup?
Hi Moz Community and staffers, Would appreciate your thoughts on the following question: **Are SEO friendly URLS less important now that Google is indexing breadcrumb markup in both desktop and mobile search? ** Background that inspired the question: Our ecommerce platform's out of the box functionality has very limited "friendly url" settings and would need some development work to setup an alias for more friendly URLS. Meanwhile, the breadcrumb markup is implemented correctly and indexed so it seems there's no longer an argument for improved CTR with SEO friendly URLS . With that said I'm having a hard time justifying the URL investment, as well as the 301 redirect mapping we would need to setup, and am wondering if more friendly URLs would lead to a significant increase in rankings for level of effort? Sidenote: We already rank well for non-brand and branded searches since we are brand manufacturer with an ecommerce presence. Our breadcrumbs are much cleaner & concise than our URL structure. Here are a couple examples. Category URL: http://www.mysite.com/browse/category1/subcat2/subcat3/_/N-7th
Algorithm Updates | | jessekanman
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 Product URL: http://www.mysite.com/product/product-name/_/R-133456E112
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 > product name The "categories" contain actual keywords just hiding them here in the example. According to my devs they can't get rid of the "_" but could possible replace it with a letter. Also they said it's an easier fix to make the URLs always lower case. Lastly some of our product URLS contain non-standard characters in the product name like "." and "," which is also a simpler fix according to my developers. Looking forward to your thoughts on the topic! Jesse0 -
Duplicate pages in language versions, noindex in sitemap and canonical URLs in sitemap?
Hi SEO experts! We are currently in the midst of reducing our amount of duplicate titles in order to optimize our SEO efforts. A lot of the "duplicate titles" come from having several language versions of our site. Therefore, I am wondering: 1. If we start using "" to make Google (and others) aware of alternative language versions of a given site/URL, how big a problem will "duplicate titles" then be across our domains/site versions? 2. Is it a problem that we in our sitemap include (many) URL's to pages that are marked with noindex? 3. Are there any problems with having a sitemap that includes pages that includes canonical URL's to other pages? Thanks in advance!
Algorithm Updates | | TradingFloor.com0 -
Is this spamming keywords into a url?
My company has previously added on extensions to a url like the example below http://www.test.com/product-name/extra-keywords My question is since there is no difference between the pages http://www.test.com/product-name and http://www.test.com/product-name/extra-keywords and you don't leave the product page to reach the extra-keyword page is this really necessary? I feel like this is probably not a best practice. Thanks for any suggestions.
Algorithm Updates | | Sika220 -
Should We Switch from Several Exact Match URLs to Subdomains Instead?
We are a company with one product customized for different vertical markets. Our sites are each setup on their own unique domains:
Algorithm Updates | | contactatonce
contactatonce.com (Brand)
autodealerchat.com (Auto Vertical)
apartmentchat.com (Apartment Vertical)
chatforrealestate.com (Real Estate Vertical) We currently rank well on the respective keyword niches including:
- auto dealer chat (exact match), automotive chat, dealer chat
- apartment chat (exact match), property chat, multifamilly chat
- chat for real estate (exact match), real estate chat To simplify the user experience we are considering moving to a single domain and subdomain structure: contactatonce.com
auto.contactatonce.com
apartment.contactatonce.com
realestate.contactatonce.com QUESTIONS:
1. Considering current Google ranking strategies, do we stand to lose keyword related traffic by making this switch?
2. Are there specific examples you can point to where an individual domain and subdomains each ranked high on Google across a variety of different niches? (I'm not talking about Wikipedia, Blogger, Blogspot, Wordpress, Yahoo Answers, etc. which are in their own class, but a small to mid size brand). Thank you,
Aaron0