<!– I just read an article on the negative aspects of using URL Shorteners. According to Jamie Sirovich President of SEO Egghead, Inc. Using short URLs is the best way to scare your readers, dilute your brand and squander your link equity. He points out some definite limitations that I have to give him credit for. For example; what if your favorite URL service goes under? All of those links you built using short URLs would disappear.
However a there are a few things that he left out. I understand that some may use URL shorteners for phishing and rick rolls and that some of us have fell victim to such abuse. That being said, I feel the community at large should not suffer for the few abuses, and that the benefits of one URL shortener specifically, cligs (I’m not being paid to promote their service) far out way the potential down side.
First of all the analytics you get from using a clig is excellent for measuring the traffic you are getting from your link building, twitter posts and over all Brand Promotion on the web.
Speaking of brand promotion; with cligs you can set the ending to whatever you want (your brand name for example), which is a great way to explain the page that is being linked too as well as get some keyword focused link text where you otherwise may not be able to.
Also I have already wrote a post about this but you can specify which page a visitor links to based on what country they are in when they click the link. Check out International link building with cligs o ya that’s a clig!
As for squandering link equity; cligs uses 301’s so you’re fine there too. Oh one last thing, you can change the destination of a clig whenever you want (great for you grey/black hatters). But from a white hat perspective, you could use this function if you no longer want to promote a certain page on your site because you made new content with the same theme. You would just change the destination and all of your links would point to your new page.
16 Comments
Nice rebuttal David. I have found that the people I trust I really don’t care if they have a shortened URL. If they are a brand that I already trust enough to subscribe to their live feed and pay attention to in the first place, I trust that they will only send me to destinations of value unless they want me to hop off their tweets faster than you can say rick roll.
Nice article David – I was waiting for someone to diffuse all the recent negative articles about URL shorteners.
Right now, I go between cligs & bitly – both good services for the money (free!). But I didn’t know about all the additional features that cligs has (that you mentioned above) – looks like I may start using it more often now.
Thanks Laura, I feel that the more short URL’s are used correctly the more trust people will have to click the links.
Ya cligs is a great service and has a lot of useful features. Thanks for the comments!
Good one!!, cligs is for sure better.
very interesting stuff, thanks!
very true insight especially the part in your blog that says if the url shortener goes under all the info is gone its really true and its sad because all the effort you put into marketing the link shortener tool is lost
Speaking of brand promotion; with cligs you can set the ending to whatever you want (your brand name for example), which is a great way to explain the page that is being linked too as well as get some keyword focused link text where you otherwise may not be able .
“Great article . I will let my site visitor read this
thanks if you can help us”
Maybe I’m just skittish (or paranoid) but I typically ignore or avoid shortened urls because they are almost always (in my experience) links to unrepeatable sites. If you are a legitimate site, show pride in yourself and accountability. And if you can’t use simple logical navigation or rewrites, maybe this isn’t your field.For addresses like the one for Google maps or something, can’t we just make the street address or building name a link?
i didn’t knew that there are some benifits for shortening the URL for link building thankx for the that is something new and very good .
Hi, It was good reading your post! I’ve been hearing about John Beck’s program these days. My colleague also purchased the system to use it as a side business work.
Good Post .Please post something on link building also
I have studied this article and thanks for this nice ideas and tips. I was just looking for that kind of article
Speaking of brand promotion; with cligs you can set the ending to whatever you want (your brand name for example), which is a great way to explain the page that is being linked too as well as get some keyword focused link text where you otherwise may not be able to…..Read More
Great post,thanks for the back link.
Thank you very much for sharing. Your information always proves to be useful. I think your post is suitable for everyne, who is interested in valuable resources . I will keep following your posts.
Surely it is best to have a URL that is representative of your company when it really comes to it.