Should URLs in tweets be spelled out or shortened?
-
For SEO purposes to get links, does it make any difference whether URLs are shortened? Do the search engines analyze key words in twitter URLs for relevance?
-
We recently launched a facebook like campaign for one of our sites and got 100's of likes, and this appeared to contribute to our Trust Factors on SEO Moz. Google doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between paid advertising on Facebook and non paid like campaigns. It seemed to help us although we weren't specifically looking to work with Social as a part of our SEO strategy at that time. Anything that gets you out there has got to be good regardless of the size of the URL. In fact, maybe better to go with short URL given the character restriction on Twitter e.g.
-
I saw Followerwonk. Pretty cool.
I saw an interesting example of SUCCESSFUL Twitter & FaceBook posting and how their social activity trumped my SEO efforts.
http://aviation-sms.com has modest domain authority. We've been selling aviation safety software for 5 years.
A startup entered the arena and they are outranking us in the search engines. Not because of keywords or backlinks, but because of twitter posts (~45,000) and FaceBook likes, (maybe a couple hundred).
This opened my eyes! WIDELY and I realized the value of their social activity. I look at 45,000 tweets and think that this doesn't seem reasonable. They must be using tools to generate Tweets.
So I'm on the social media track now as part of my SEO strategy, something I've neglected for years.
-
Unless you really need the space to type in a long tweet, it is obviously better to include a direct link to your website for at least two reasons:
-
help build your brand (people see your domain, not a shortner)
-
help get social signals to improve your SEO efforts indirectly
Hope that helps.
-
-
Chris, Tommy is correct, all Twitter links are no follow. So i guess it would depend on what you are tweeting.
For the Social signal aspect of it, ie social recognition from the search engines, my best practice is to link to the BEST SHARABLE content. Whitepaper, Blog, Email marketing piece, the list goes on and on . As far as the url goes, it really doesnt matter if its shortened or not, because a link is a link. Make sure you share your most popular items and pages ( FROM AN SEO STANDPOINT ).
Check out Followerwonk. Really cool tool.
Best wishes,
Hampig M.
BizDetox
-
Hi Chris,
I believe Twitter links are "nofollow" links so even if you have thousands of link from Twitter, those links won't give you link juice. However, Search Engines do look like whether people are sharing your links on Social Media; therefore, it does play a role in SEO.
For Twitter best practices, you should shortened the link. It saves character space for your tweet and give you more characters to share what you want to say.
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
-
Which is best for SEO: Dedicated landing pages for contests or templated page URL?
A colleague and I were having a discussion about this and wanted to get insight from the community about this. Most often we run contests on social channels, but for some we place them on our e-commerce web site - particularly those which have a universal appeal to customers since these also tend to be included in our e-mails. So our question is with regard to any links built to those contest pages, is it better to: have them point to a unique page, Example: domain.com/customer-appreciation-contest OR A reusable page/URL that can continuously be repurposed and updated for new contests. Example: domain.com/contests We discussed pros/cons of each but am curious if anyone here has insight or source that definitively advises which method is best. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Social Media | | ATShock1 -
G+ company page custom url
Hi I thought these could only be strictly brand name and as suggested by Google however i see a clients competitor has added an obvious target keyword to the end of their custom url Does this have any benefit ? Is it advisable to try achieve similar for my client or is it bad practice since contrary to G's guidelines ? If it is ok to do similar how do you edit your custom domain ? All Best Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Short Facebook page name/vanity URL
Does anyone know how to go about getting a page name on Facebook of less than 5 characters? I saw Moz was able to claim facebook.com/moz (BTW, congrats on the redesign!), and many other brands also have claimed page names under 5 characters. Has anyone else had success claiming a short page name? Do you have to know the right person at Facebook, or are there other requirements? We have around 35K likes on our page, and our site gets a pretty good amount of traffic. My boss doesn't like any of my ideas that are 5+ characters... she really wants the short URL. If anyone has any insights on what I need to do (or who I need to talk to at Facebook), I'd really appreciate it!
Social Media | | john4math0 -
About url shorterner like ow.ly - does it count?
Hi there, I want to ask do you know does Google counts web pages' links in social medias like Facebook, Twitter etc when they are shortened like that: And is it better not to be shortened like that? http://ow.ly/2uk0Ow I am using HootSuite to post in those social medias and it automatically shortens them like that when there is a new post in rss emission.
Social Media | | vladokan0 -
Influential users who have retweeted my tweet
I was wondering why I see my account in most of the "Influential users who have retweeted my tweet"? As I know, I don't retweet my own tweet 🙂
Social Media | | Teklan0 -
Do keywords in a URL that's linkified provide anchor text benefits?
I'm curious about links that are just URLs (e.g. http://www.google.com/reader) or in a URL-like format (e.g. Google.com/Reader) vs links with plain-word anchor text (e.g. Google Reader). If a link that is just a URL (or a partial URL) has keywords in it, do those keywords provide anchor text relevance benefits? I'm particularly thinking about URL shorteners that provide customized links, and social media. Many web tools (twitter, blog comment systems) don't render HTML but will automatically link URLs. If http://boston.craigslist.org/jjj/ gets linked to through custom shortened URLs like http://bit.ly/Boston-Jobs, is it more likely to rank for the term "Boston Jobs" than if it received the same number of links using a non-custom shortened URL like http://bit.ly/ejq5uX9?
Social Media | | Jay.Neely0 -
How to pull data for number of tweets per page?
Where is it possible to find a total number of tweets by URL? So, for example, domain.com/page1.html 2 tweets domain.com/page2.html has 20 tweets, etc.
Social Media | | nicole.healthline0 -
So if I wanted to monitor tweets about Lady Gaga and limit it to Austin, TX how would I filter this?
And lets say I wanted to do this over an extended period of time. And for bonus credits... is there any program that would notify me of each new tweet as it happens.
Social Media | | Thos0030