URL Shorteners - 8th of March 2010


We are going to discuss the implementation of URL shorteners such as TinyUrl, Bit.Ly, and Ow.Ly. What are URL shorteners? In small worlds they shorten a url or a webpage's address so that it is easier and more convenient to the user to click through it.

How can these be useful?

Well some of the future plans of implementation in the optimisation of the website is the creation of a Facebook and a Twitter account. A twitter account only allows their users to input 140 characters. This way I am able to put in the URL and even give a descriptive text about the content of the link using a URL shortener that I will choose in this log entry and explain my reasons of choice as well obviously.


Some of the most known URL Shorteners are:



This list is only some of the most known, there are several more URL shorteners. Each of them have different features of what they can offer to the user.



There is a spreadsheet here where you can find the differences of several different URL shorteners.

Alternatively you you may click here: http://bit.ly/urlshortenersheet



Now for Search Engine Optimisation, URL shorteners don't really do much. They do however improve a usability for long url's and they are great for social networking websites, such as Twitter and Facebook. On the other hand if one was to use a URL shortener that used a redirect instead of 301, for example 302, or even 303, there could be consequences SEO wise, because of the fact that the Page Rank isn't passed over. With the URL redirect 301 it is.

The Url Shortener I will be using will be Bit.Ly mainly because twitter has adopted them as their favourit url shortener and one of the next steps in my SEO campaign is to make a twitter account.



References:




Google Ranking: 21