Kennith Swanson's Site

Recently, the next happened with me, I wrote my frequent monthly newsletter and submitted it on my website. Since this was a longer Wp Link, like millions of other site owners, I used a URL shortener service to make this link more functional and controllable.

I posted this shortened Link to Twitter and positioned it in my weekly email posting. In a few moments I started getting feedbacks and email messages that there's a mistake because the URL doesn't work.

Which can be easily done, but when I checked the hyperlink, I discovered that the URL shortener service was not working correctly and giving the dreaded "Page Not Found" response. To compound the problem, I was using the Google URL shortener Goo.gl and since it was Google everyone assumed the mistake was on my part, I mean Google is Google.

Before that I was utilizing the extremely well-liked bit.ly but after that I turned to Goo.gl simply because like everybody else, I trust Google much more! And almost everything functions much better with Google; this was the first time something I utilized with Google had not worked as planned. Not just mine but almost every other Goo.gl link wasn't working neither. No big loss, except if you were linking your Black Friday & Cyber Monday targeted traffic through these types of shorteners.

But this introduces the entire problem of regardless of whether or not you need to use a url shortener?

A URL hyperlink shortener functions by redirecting your smaller website link to the longer one you've entered into their storage system. If this is a permanent 301 redirect, your SEO features should go through to your extended hyperlink. No difficulty on that part. If the shortening service utilizes a 302 short-term link then SEO is not passed thru to your own longer link because the search engines only examine this link as short-term.

A lot of the major shortening services use proper redirects - in case they're functioning!

Many people only start using shorteners because of the reputation of Twitter, plus they only allow you to post 140 characters, including links. The method to use shortneres also enables you to distribute your urls easier over the internet.

It is also a great and simple method to cover up your affiliate marketer urls if you're into affiliate marketing. Think about it, people publish shortened URLs more simply, simply because they're somewhat misterious and individuals usually link to funny videos, pictures or stories on social sites with one of these urls.

There are positives and negatives when utilizing an URL shortener assistance. The easiest way is always to take advantage of them but in a controllable way, for example by choosing services which have a good track record and are more popular; but of course you can (and maybe should) add less well-known ones to the mix also. One other option would be to spread your links across a bunch of these shortener services so even if one falls for a few minutes or hours, a large amount of your urls will still function. For instance if you Tweet, blog, submit ebooks or short reviews regularly you can use a different service for each of these.