How to shorten URL adress?
-
hi,
in my business Facebook page I have my website address. I want to track how many people arriving through this URL address to my site. I want to use URL builder but the final URL is too long and not pretty. I thought about using bitly.com but I need that the address on my page will contain the name of my brand.any ideas hot to shorten the URL address and still be able to track the data?
thank you all.
-
I agree 100% with Erica
that's what I was trying to explain to my 1st post. That is going to have to come up with a different domain regardless of whether or not you shorten it or simply choose a different TLD
it should be noted though that only bit.ly enterprise & AWE.SM are capable of allowing a person to create a unique short domain and creating a name after the/of your choice there may be another tool out there that can do it however to the best of my knowledge.
Bit.ly's Personal Edition will allow you To create a unique extension only if no one else on all of bit.ly has chosen that ending. Chances are they have though, and it's wise to go with tool that will create a short domain that is capable of making your brand look good.
the 1st answer does still answer your question. It's what I would do and what I have done that's why referenced the bseo.co link because I can to exactly what Erica stated save space on social networks and create my own short domain that redirects to my homepage if it does not have a unique URL it needs to 301 redirect
I hope this clears everything up.
Thomas
-
I also suggest using a service like bit.ly for shortening URLs & grabbing your own custom, even shorter domain. At Moz, we have mz.cm, which lets us get even smaller on Twitter and the link.
Any traffic coming into your site, you can track on GA. You probably want to set up custom tags and do some filters for what campaigns you're running.
At their basics, URL shortners are a 301 redirect. So if you really wanted to do the extra work, you could have a 301 redirect of say http://example.com/awesome to http://example.com/mysiteisrad/everyonelovesit/youarecool. It's just easier to use a 3rd party -- and since you own the domain and are pointing the traffic to the site you own, you can track it in GA -- like bit.ly to do the heavy lifting for you.
-
You can do that using http://totally.awe.sm/ , bit.ly pro or Bilty free if you don't mind not having control of what appears after the / you will need different TLD and the same name for your domain. if example.com is your brand domain then example.co is your shared domain.
I would recommend against using your websites domain name to create a lot of shared links that will not be part of your website. Even if they will look like example.com/fbshare or example.com/679a43054
You will need a new domain of your choice of course.
Sorry if I was not as clear in the beginning.
I misread your question.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi Joni,
What Vadim has said is true. You can use it for either platform really any platform that shortens links.
Use this tool to build the URL I am a huge fan of Kiss Metrics however that does not mean that you have to use them in order to find this article useful.
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-to-use-utm-parameters/
&
Then run whatever you build through the http://totally.awe.sm/ shortener or URL shortener of your choice.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
-
thank you for your answer. maybe I missed something but I don't think that it answered my question.
it doesn't matter where I put my link, I want to be able to tag the link with google URL builder and than to shorten the address in a way that will include my domain name.
I want to track the data from google analytics and not from other platforms
-
Yes use http://totally.awe.sm/
They are by far the best in my opinion. Bitly Does offer a enterprise version that I believe starts at $900 a month
http://blog.awe.sm/2013/07/16/now-everyone-can-be-awe-sm
http://totally.awe.sm/platform/
you're looking to shorten a URL so it represents your brand and allow for you to control what comes after the / along with having a generally good looking URL.?
Check out this custom short URL of mine running on AWE.SM I created it so it should bring you right back to this page
so you are aware you can create a custom short domain for free using Bitly however your ability to track along with your ability to create a URL with less than 7 characters after the / or a custom name after the / would be taken away completely.
If I can make a recommendation as to how to find the perfect short URL check out https://domai.nr/
also remember certain registrars are not going to allow you to use certain TLD's for instance Italy has .it
they do not allow anyone that is not a citizen of the EU to registrar that domain. So my strongest recommendation is to use a .co if available obviously you may find something that works perfectly for you. However check out the TLD as some are under different regulations that will make your stomach turn.
I purchased a 3 letter domain that ended in.TK unaware that .TK is a TLD that is given away for free in certain circumstances, but only for a certain amount of clicks. So you can either purchase it for an extremely high amount or you can build your links be ruined.
name.com It is a good choice so is http://www.enom.com/
Namecheap.com is excellent as well and you can get a very good discount using Moz.com/perks
I hope this is been of help,
Thomas
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
-
Facebook adds a trailing slash to urls?
Hey Guys, we are facing a problem in our www.batuta.com with Facebook shares. Seems like because we choose to set our preferred canonical version urls to end with a trailing slash ( / ), like this one e.g.: www.batuta.com/الوجهات/إسبانيا/ Facebook adds automatically another ( / ) when trying to read the url on first share before its ever indexed in FB. Which makes Facebook think its a bad request! cause then the URL has two // at the end of it. hope this was clear. anyway, so first question: did anybody face this issue before? any solutions? Second, and might be more important: I might be forced to face the option of changing the canonical tags to be a url without a ( / ) if I will have to do this I will enforce a redirect on every url request with an ending trailing slash ( / ) to be redirected to the new canonical version without. will this be enough? how big am I supposed to suffer here? am I facing a long time with double indexed urls? wonder if anybody faced this problem before! Best Regards
Social Media | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
UTM Code, URL Shortner, or hardline in tweet
We have partners that promote our site via social media. We're looking to leverage twitter to increase SEO rankings. Does it make a difference if we use a link straight to our domain, our domain with UTM codes, or a url shortener?
Social Media | | draftster0 -
How does Google handle URL shortening, do they pass link juice?
When I'm Social Book marking my websites I use a url shortening service such as bitly.com or onlywire.com. Do these services transfer link juice in the same ways as a direct link would do?
Social Media | | iansellman0 -
Does a 301 redirect pass along Google +1's from the old url to the new one?
When I 301 redirect a page that has content that has been +1'ed by our visitors, I would assume that Google would handle a +1 the same as a link and pass this authority along to the new url. Has anyone had any experience or heard directly from Google confirming this behavior?
Social Media | | Eventful0 -
URL's for videos to increase page value and social sharing value
Hello Everyone, We recently developed videos for all of our products. Upon clicking on each video, we have the video popping up in a lightbox. The videos are hosted on Amazon s3. We would like to implement social sharing for each video and to do so, we are going to have the video load on each page upon being clicked using jquery. My question is how we should structure the urls so that the actual product page gets the share value. So for example, if the page is www.website.com/product1.aspx should we have the video be www.website.com/product1.aspx#video and ensure there is a canonical url on each product page so that the benefit is given to www.website.com/product1.aspx Or is there another way that anyone would recommend doing this? The videos are AMAZING and I'd like to ensure that as these videos are shared on social networks, that the value of the share is directed to the actual product page. Any ideas mozzers? Thanks!
Social Media | | eric_since1910.com0 -
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 -
SEO & Social | More SEO effect by liking the page URL rather than the Facebook Page?
SEOMoz Gurus, I am wondering what our best implementation strategy shoul dbe around linking up the Facebook Like button on our pages. Essentially there are two options: A) Linking the button directly to the Facebook Page of the web site so every Like is actually converting into a Facebook "Fan" which can be messaged going forward through our Facebook page. B) Having them like the actual URL which might be more beneficial from an SEO and viral perspective as now a link to the actual URL gets shared on the Liker's facebook wall and it should also be easier to use that lIke for Google & Co. as it's tied to the actual URL not a random Facebook page given that search engines already convert those signals. Both approaches obviously have their benefits. Are there any common guidelines on what is a better approach to take from a pure SEO perspective? Thanks /Thomas
Social Media | | tomypro0 -
Does the value of Twitter/FB shares change depending on the url used?
I have a really hard time wrapping my head around the use rel canonical. I just watched WBF and it brought up a question that I had. I had a situation where some of my pages could be accessed a couple of ways: www.mydomain/question1.php?id=24-keyword-rich-url, or www.mydomain/question1.php?id=24 I used rel canonical to tell the search engines that the keyword rich url was the one to index. Now, we all know that shares on Twitter, FB, etc. can add value to my site's SEO. So, if someone happens to be on the non-keyword-rich url and they click a button to share, do I still get the same seo benefit? Which brings me to a related question...if someone shares your content via a bitly or other shortened domain, is there any difference to the benefit you would get as compared to them sharing the full domain name?
Social Media | | MarieHaynes1