Advantages of shortened URLs

[rakulpreet]

What are the advantages of shortened URLs in seo? Are these effective in getting ranked high in search results with specific keywords? Are there any flaws of using shortened URLs?

 

[RH-Calvin]

Shortened URLs are mostly used to mask the original URL of your website. It is mostly used in social media promotions. They are also used to advertise your links in various platforms.

 

[Gary Moody]

One of the reasons that bit.ly has received so much attention lately is because of the comprehensive data Bitly provides in the form of live click data, geographic location, the webpage the link where the link was clicked, and more.

 

[Ringo64]

A short URL (such as bit.ly or something else) really is helpful in social media and printed solutions (non-screen). As in such social media sites such as Twitter, your content is limited and in printed solutions your audience is typing in the URL, not clicking so you want to keep it short.

The main thing about URLs and SEO is you want to keep "readable." So that you are not using query strings or anything in the URL that is tough to decipher. I.e. if we are selling a Forum Promotion T-shirt we do NOT want to use a coded URL like: domain.com/products.php?prod=12, we would like to rewrite this URL as: domain.com/products/forum-promotion-t-shirt

Keeping URLs short to a degree will help with readability but if you follow a good strategy you shouldn't enter the realm of SEO URL penalties.

 

[Skyon Archer]

Apache htaccess mod_rewrite makes it where your URLs can be shortened but not rely upon a third party short url redirection. Which would you rather promote, bit.ly or yourdomain.com? I'd rather share links from my own domain.

 

[jesse pitt]

Well people can remember it easier and it's also a good idea to make it catchy so it sticks into a persons head.