I received a great question from one of our Competitive Edge customers: What is the best Twitter URL shortener?
As I dove into writing an answer, I took a step back and pondered whether it’s actually a good idea to use a URL shortener when posting in social media. After all, Twitter now has a built-in URL shortener, so you no longer get extra characters by using your own shortened URL when you want to include a link in your tweet.
Here are the pros and cons I came up with for posting shortened links in social media.
PROS of using URL shorteners in social media:
- If you pick a URL shortener with some analytics, you’ll get easy stats on how many clicks that URL got. For example, take a look at the stats bit.ly provides in the image below.
- With some URL shorteners like bit.ly, you can customize the URL to make it something like bit.ly/AboutUsNews that looks nice, and is easier for people to remember. If you don’t have much control over the URLs on your website, and you like the idea of using link language, custom URLs are nice.
CONS of using URL shorteners in social media:
- Some people reading your social media post or tweet may not trust your shortened link because they’re not sure which site it will be taking them to. That means you could easily get fewer clicks on your link than if you used the full original URL. Many accounts that put out tweets that are spam or phishing attempts do use URL shorteners, so a shortened URL may make some people’s spidey senses tingle.
- Using a URL shortener is an extra step that makes posting in social media take a little more time. Better to post quickly and often, so make it easy on yourself.
- URL shortening services can go down temporarily (or maybe even permanently), rendering your shortened URLs broken for that time. Of course, your own site can go down too.
- If someone chooses to link to your website from their own website via the shortened URL they saw on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc., it will pass only 90-99% of the SEO value, or PageRank, to your site. The shortened URL will pass even less SEO value if you’re using a not-so-great URL shortener that doesn’t use permanent 301 redirects. If the person sees only the full original URL, that’s the link they’ll use on their site – and then you’ll receive all the SEO value of their link. (Keep in mind that the links you post in social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are NoFollow, which means they don’t pass PageRank like a normal website link. But still, social media links are a ranking factor that search engines pay attention to.)
What do other people think? Here are a few tweeted opinions on URL shorteners from savvy social media people:
- Ryan Campbell, a long-time account executive at a marketing agency in Portland, tweeted, “I have no problem with them, but studies I’ve read say URL shorteners decrease CTR.” (CTR means click-through rate, or the number of people who see a link and choose to click it.)
- Keridwyn, who provides social media services in Seattle, tweeted, “Not only do shorturls allow you to track clicks, they also look much tidier! I use them not only in social but emails as well.”
- Charlie Loyd said shortened URLs in social media are a yellow flag to him, and a credibility buster. He tweeted, “Domain names, and recognizing things I’ve already seen, are important,” and “An unnecessarily shortened link says ‘I expect you to click on anything I link to’ and/or ‘you’re just a statistic to me.’”
- Pierce, a marketing manager and author of Epic Marketing Fails, tweeted, ” I like the full URLs or at least part of the full URL so that you know where it’s going to take you.”
- Cesar Pinera tweeted, “I don’t trust shorteners, they hide their destination. Thus, I don’t follow URLs that use shorteners unless I know the posters.”
What do you think about URL shorteners? Do you have a favorite one? Share in the comments.
This article was written by Kristina Weis of AboutUs.
Kristina is customer service and social media lead for AboutUs. She helps website owners who are trying to promote their businesses online. Her personal blog is at KristinaWeis.com and she tweets at @KristinaWeis.
I believe URL shorteners have had their day. Trust and credibility are more important these days. Best to use the full link in my opinion.
I only recently set up a Facebook page for my first blog and used some shorteners when the url to a specific article was long and looked untidy. And working out how to do it made me feel clever (laugh now)….and maybe cool too? (OK that’s enough laughing now!) But then the novelty wore off and I don’t bother any more.
From my own experience, when I first saw them used in newsletter emails sent to me, I thought it looked as if the person knew more than I did – true – and maybe professional/clever as well. But now, I agree with Charlie Lloyd’s comment: I like to know what I’m clicking on and you can only do that with a full url.
So now I trust them less and don’t click on a short url unless I know the person using it.
Great post – and I haven’t seen this topic covered elsewhere, so it was interesting and useful too. Thanks.
Why not take the best of both worlds? If you have a relatively small domain name, create your own shortened URLs and put your own tracking on them. People will recognize the domain name, will be more likely to follow them and they will be relatively short.
Take MichiGO.com for instance, we provide small businesses with Web Design and SEO solutions. It is a relatively short domain, so when creating a short link to and article about “How Social Media Can Benefit Your Small Business,” we can make a shortened URL to post around town like michigo.com/social-benefits (which is much shorter than michigo.com/how-social-media-can-benefit-your-small-business/).
So a tweet would resemble something like “Find out how social media can benefit your small business, reason one, reason two, and reason three: michigo.com/social-benefits” which is 128 characters, so you could even add a little more if you want or some hash tags.
You could even make it easy to help customers find your social media accounts:
michigo.com/fb
michigo.com/tw
michigo.com/g+
michigo.com/li
That’s what we have been doing with customers and plan to do ourselves, once we can actually launch our site.
To All: I like URL shortners, but they have their place… As an SEO consult I advise against them in media, but some older phone services wont visualize my sites. I agree strongly believe in domain recognition, and BRAND recognition. As To Social Media _ Twitter, PInterest, and others they usually alter whatever URL you use. I disagree with this practice for several reasons. You PAID for a DOMAIN NAME and You WORK for BRAND RECOGNITION are 2 main good reasons. Another point I will add is if the URL compiler or URL shortner goes offline you may be loosing valuable traffic.
I allways thought url shorteners were a good way to make your comments brief. You alsa can write more in a twit with them, but I never thought abaut the negative side.
I’m going to use my url because it is not very long, thank you for the advice.
I am of the view to always use full URL everywhere.
I use http://www.ttwi.st which is a premium URL shortener made for Internet Marketers. They are Clickbank friendly, have great tracking and have their own API. Your stats are also your own rather than having links shared with other people like some other URL shorteners.
As for me whenever i see any shorten url on twitter or Facebook, i tend to click on it lesser because i feel that is a not trusted site which might not be the case.
If you have a long url, actually you can create a shorten url on your own domain site and redirect it, you gain more click that way and also good way to brand your domain name.
URL shortening services are not 100% reliable
I STICK by my comments in September. IF you do use a URL shortner try and find one that you can use your own BRAND name in like tiny.cc I have been compelled to use my acronym in shortners but decided against it for SEO and SEM purposes. You get more linkjuice with your true domain URL than you will with a relay o/r redirect. Plus, you want to build community trust in your Brand.
Good article Kristina and some very insightful comments from everyone. I usually use Bitly as a shortener just so I can see the clicks & stats. The issue of trust in a link seems to be a bigger issue than how much info you can cram into how small a space. Maybe time to think a little more about alternatives.
I hear everyone about the trusted links… but with twitter shortening them anyway, they must not have been to worried about CTR – else it would have killed / dented twitter.
For me it is simply trying to sift out the noise of links – they are the formatting that makes the web work, why have all this garbage around, make it easier to read. Trust the source? Trust the link. Bit.ly links are great, because if one ever gives you pause, simply add a “+” on the end of it to see the details. Highly transparent. http://Bit.ly/MarkDilley+
Nice piece Kristina!!