Using Shortened Links (through URL shorteners) An SEO NO NO?

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I developed a plugin that does this and it helps me earn my livlihood. I usually set the redirect nature to use 307 redirects which are "tempoary redirects" where as 301s are "permanent redirects" and pass SEO. I also have features to treat spider traffic differently than human traffic, which is called cloaking and a potentially dangerous technique but it would work for spiders that do not obey robots.txt and nofollow rules. But for the most part adding a rel=nofollow to a link will prevent a spider from leaving your site to visit the link's location and this can be done for masked or unmasked links.

I use masked links for the tracking capabilities built in. Say I have a product I promote on forums and on my own websites. If I used a masked/shortened link with tracking capabilities I can find out what channels are best sending traffic through that link. If the traffic arrives on the site where I created the link profile, eg: http : // www . hatnohat . com /go/rank-tracker (The site in this case would be hatnohat . com), and that same traffic arrived from searching a search phrase on bing and google and clicked that masked link, then my tracking systems will tell me what search engine the site came from, the internal page they were on when they clicked the link, and the search phrase they used to find that page.

I never mask internal links because as someone else said that will add an unnecessary redirect step. I only mask external links I want to track or geo-target offers/destinations to.

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If the link is 301'd and nofollowed then a shortened URL will act as a backlink. I've confirmed this by testing link blast campaigns on shortened bit.ly links and these links showing up as powerful backlinks over at ahrefs.com.

[deepsand]

If the link is 301'd and nofollowed then a shortened URL will act as a backlink.

301 and "nofollow" what link? A shortened link is automatically re-directed to the fully expanded URL from which it was constructed.

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301 and "nofollow" what link? A shortened link is automatically re-directed to the fully expanded URL from which it was constructed.

This is true but sometimes the redirect nature is not 301. Also sometimes a link shortner service will do a meta-refresh before it sends the traffic to the new destination so the link juice stops at the redirect service gateway rather than moving forward to the final destination.

If a masked URL is on a remote site and you click it, as long as the redirect nature of the masked link is 301, then it will act as a backlink.

Example: Site C has a masked link posted on it that 301's to Site A, but the masked link itself is hosted on Site B. Even though the traffic is routed through site B site, Site C will get the backlink juice from Site A... as long as the redirect is a 301 and site C has not placed a rel='nofollow' on the html of the link. Even if site C has placed nofollow on the link site A will still get a small amount of link juice but not near the amount it would get if the link html was dofollow.

[deepsand]

You said

If the link is 301'd and nofollowed then a shortened URL will act as a backlink.

I asked

301 and "nofollow" what link?

Your reply,

This is true but sometimes the redirect nature is not 301. Also sometimes a link shortner service will do a meta-refresh before it sends the traffic to the new destination so the link juice stops at the redirect service gateway rather than moving forward to the final destination.

does not answer the question.

Did you perchance mean not "nofollow?"

BTW, major SEs have been treating fast meta-refreshes as 301s for several years.

[brofarops]

I myself use tinycc and it appears to work rather well. Unlike some shortners I can setup my own 3 plus character subredirect and yes it redirects fast and backlinks well.

[claybutler]

I myself use tinycc and it appears to work rather well. Unlike some shortners I can setup my own 3 plus character subredirect and yes it redirects fast and backlinks well.

I think you missed the entire theme of the post. Of course they work, the question is are they a smart long term strategy and the answer is absolutely not.

[marianajones]

I have been using the shortened url in Social Networking Sites but have never tried in SEO.

[MyRentals]

Two problems with shorteners.

1. As pointed out it's a redirect which in an unnecessary step to add.
2. If the company ever goes under, there go all the links.

Always use full urls to link.

Totally agree.. Even more so these days. Anchor text on URLs allow for visibly short links on a web page, who really cares about how long a genuine URL is in this case?

Also, if its a link to an internal page of the site - then Search Engines actually give credit for full internal page links.
Friendly URL's actually help with appropriate ranking too and improve the understanding of your site for the search engines.

Morestar your instincts are correct on so many levels. Your friend is mistaken.



My own research shows that the majority of web surfers don't actually trust shortened links when they see them and avoid clicking them inside a site! (The link could be pointing absolutely anywhere and users dislike Malware or the risk of it. They don't like what they can't recognize.) Not a great thing to use for user experience.

[sonu rey]

what are its advantages? i couldn't understand the logic !!