Tag Archives: Self Shortener

Pros and Cons of URL Shortening Services

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URL Shortening services have become all the rage recently, especially with the character limitations on twitter.  They have their advantages, but also have disadvantages.  Those disadvantages become readily apparent as a web developer, affiliate, or Internet marketer.  URL shortening services.

Pros

  • Making your URLs shorter. The biggest advantage to using these services is their Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
  • Masking your URL. This can be advantageous if you want to hide the fact that you’re linking to an affiliate offer.  That might also be considered a little gray or black hat.
  • Tracking clicks is possible with some providers. This can be useful for tracking the effectiveness of campaigns or specific mentions of things.  You can have multiple shortened URLs point to a single place with different sources, allowing you to track click data.
  • You don’t have to manage the shortening software or hosting yourself. For people that aren’t technically inclined, especially with web programming, this can be a major advantage.

Cons

  • If the URL shortening service goes out of business you’re screwed. This is especially true if it was a popular link, or it took a lot of work to get the link listed where a lot of people can see it.
  • They can see a lot of your data. If someone at a shortening service gets wise to what you’re doing, especially in the affiliate world, they can track a lot of your data and what you’re doing and mimic it, reducing your sales.  I’ve had this happen personally before, and it really sucks.
  • People don’t always trust shortened URLs. I find that if I can use a shortened URL that makes sense to a person behind my own trusted domain, I see about 15% more clicks.  I’m actually in the process right now of adjusting all of my plug-ins that do automated posting to my personal URL shortener.
  • Shortened URLs carry no SEO value. This is an important one.  You aren’t getting credit for your links when you use a shortening service, they are.  SEO credit doesn’t carry through the service because it usually isn’t a 301 redirect.

What do you do?

It’s hard to decide what you’re going to do, knowing these things.  I’ve found that it’s best to use your own URL shortening service.  There is a plugin for WordPress called Self Shortener.  It can be automatically installed via the plug-in manager or downloaded from their website.  This specific service doesn’t track clicks, but I’ve modified mine to do so.  There is also the open source project by Gentle Source for an installable URL shortener.