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We just got our own url shortener “dburl.co“, but you ask why would we get your own shortener when there are so many free versions like bit.ly available.
There are a couple of reasons:
- Sites like bit.ly have public access to your links so that others can see traffic sources etc.
- If a public site closes all you old links would be lost.
- We have control and ownership of our links.
- Unfortunately public free URL shorteners like bit.ly have been targeted by spammers and fraudsters to disguise the nature of their links.
So why use a url shortener:
- www.dolmanbateman.com.au + page url is very long so if we wanted to use the link in sites like twitter or LinkedIn the majority of the message is taken up by the URL.
- We wanted to add variables to the URL so that we could see the effectiveness of our articles and marketing efforts. We can the measure the effectiveness of our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns to determine where visitors are coming from (traffic sources) and what pages they (in general) were interested in. With this information, we can then determine what type of content is appropriate for each of the social media platforms.
- If the full url link is changed for whatever reason, you can change the link in the admin section of the shortener program to redirect to the new url. Say the address of your Facebook company page changed due to a change in Facebook’s policies ( ie. Account cancelled or lost), you could change all the links to the new Facebook page easily.
A quick note, is don’t use URL shorteners in emails as this will be flagged as spam by ISP’s and email spam filters.
What do you need to do to have your own url shortener:
- Buy a short length domain name that is appropriate for your business. (2 minutes)- Cost $20
- Install the program from http://yourls.org/ (5 minutes) onto your webserver. – Free
- All done. Ready to start shortening your urls.
