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Thanks to Ileane I’m writing this post. In the previous post “Shorten URLs with Su.pr…” she mentioned, that she doesn’t like those URL shorteners, that have frames, because they don’t count the traffic, which affects your Alexa ranking and PR a little bit. I didn’t even think about it before, so I’ve started digging the info about it.
Sebastian showed some advanced material on this topic. Thanks to that, I’ve compiled several the most important reasons why url shorteners are bad… and risky for seo of your website. Sure, feel free to shorten others’ links, but let me show you why it’s highly not recommended for your website’s links.
1. Stop working
URL Shortening Services can stop working. If you’re working with Tinyurl, then you have, probably, met that problem, when Tinyurl was off for awhile. This means, that every single shortened URL to your site is broken (not working ). You’ll get no traffic at all, because it’s not possible to even recognize the native domain of the shortened URL.
2. They absorb traffic?
Framed URL shorteners absorb your traffic stats. One word – thievery. Nothing more. Visitors, actually, visit your website or blog, but they are not counted as your traffic. It’s worsened even more, when those frames include social buttons like “retweet”, “digg” etc, because people promote not your website, but those URL shorteners – technically.
3. Less authority
With framed URL shorteners you lose also visible authority signs like the number of retweets and so on. Just look at my previous post about Su.pr URL Shortener.
You can see, that there are 14 diggs and 1 retweet (by the 25th of Jan., 2010). This is not normal, because usually the number of retweets is more, than the number of diggs.
This is because I’ve used Su.pr shortened URL of that post in tweets promoting it. Though, actually, there was a rather positive number of retweets for my blog:
4. Links don’t belong to you
All shortened links don’t belong to you. They belong to those services, which produce them. And the shortened links raise those services rankings, not yours. All the traffic data belongs to them.
5. Meaningless, unattractive and irrelevant looking
Most of shortened links are meaningless, unattractive and irrelevant looking. For example, compare http://www.iwoodpecker.com/getting-website-traffic-in-2010/ and http://nxy.in/3jlj9 . Which URL makes more sense? Yeah, the second one looks compact, but it’s just a set of letters.
6. Redirects?
301 redirects are not your friend. Every redirect slows down your page loading time. Now it’s crucial for SEO and traffic. Don’t forget about those rushing people, who surfes through the net all the time. They hate everything, which is slower, than “Formula 1″ :)
7. Short term
In the short term of using URL shorteners for your website URLs you have some nice stats and reference. But this is not what should matter, because it has too many risks. You have to be sure, that your links would be working in a year or two.
Today it’s getting popular to make your own shortened links. I think, that this is all blogs’ future. Read Sebastian’s tutorial about the integration of your own URL shortener.
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These are all very true and I have to agree with you about URL shorteners. I wouldn’t say they are all bad though. They do serve a purpose of having a very long link fit somewhere within a certain limit of space – Tweets, Texts, etc..
Inside the Webb´s last awesome post ..Check Your Username Availability on Tons of Websites with Namechk
Inside the Webb,
But still.. if your URLs “speak” with thier tails.. shortening could be avoided -)
Well…its weird!!
“Get more traffic with Supr”
“More Traffic
Su.pr is the only URL shortener that also helps your content get discovered! Every Su.pr URL exposes your content to StumbleUpon’s nearly 8 million users!”
Thats what the su.pr said!
I don’t know if the frame count the traffic to your site or not. But stumbleupon do, as one of my traffic source in my Google Analytics, Sitemeter, and Getclicky statistic.
I use stumbleupon to drive traffic, but i destroy the frame with some script.
Allan, thanks for mentioning me in this post. I’m glad we had the conversation (isn’t that the beauty of blogging and commenting) because you actually took the time to research and found out more about the topic than I knew before. This is great! Did you find out anything about using bit.ly? I don’t think they use the url frame. Sometimes you do need to shorten just because the tweet will be too long otherwise. I’d like to use something as a last resort.
@Ileane
Ileane´s last awesome post ..Branding The Podcast Blog
I don’t like to shorten my URLS mostly because reason number 4 on your post as the link is not mine, I just past it long if I have to!
Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last awesome post ..Why Bloggers Lie about Making Money Online and their Blog Traffic
Short of website programming that Sebastian’s link suggests, if the goal is to create a URL that may or may not be sent to your Twitter account, consider a WordPress plugin called Wordtwit. http://ariwriter.com/say-bye-to-twitterfeed-say-hi-to-wordtwit/
Ari Herzog´s last awesome post ..Does Your Blog Need Criticism and Review?
Well, to some extents, it is still good like in Twitter as you have only 140 characters. Thanks, I know this but we can improve it by redirect or use Google Shortlink Service
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Interesting and a source of concern. I am glad that you have done some research on this. I have heard about some of the downside of these before, but this really opens my eyes on the topic.
Definite food for thought.
Thanks for sharing.
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Hey Allan, nice write up.
You can always ‘steal’ back your traffic that is held in a frame using the Frame Buster plugin. I wrote about it on the site a while ago. Alternatively, Headspace2 has the option to break frames.
You can also increase the effective of a link (shortened) by putting your core keywords directly before the link. This may not do well in the majority of situations but we have ranked well in the SERPs for phrases that have low-to-medium competition.
Regards,
Karl Foxley
Karl Foxley´s last awesome post ..Guest Blogging For Fresh Content And Optimised Backlinks
Karl Foxley,
Awesome tips. “Frame Buster” you say..
Thanks for stopping by :)
OMG! If its not one thing then it is another, what ever happened to the good old day of simple blogging.
I think I am going to give the WP plug-in a try and move. This is a very good topic as I of course had not clue about the hazards of url shortening, but had noticed that sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t
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Ms. Freeman,
I’m trying this plugin already. It works great, I’d say! It takes about 1 second to redirect from framed shortened URL to the normal one.
It was what most teased me and I tweeted few messages about how irritating is it to click a link on twitter and then reach to ugly looking tinyurl page and click there again to proceed to site. I hate them most.
The next thing, the social sites like blogengage and similar,
1. they place the title of my page as their title
2. they grabs brief description from the page too
3. they place the list of related articles
4. the worst they put a comment box too and collect the comments.
The consequence
A. I get some traffic from there because most of us are accustomed to click on title. I get a number tagged as to indicate how popular the post is.
B. The other side, these sites are ranked very high and pull traffic from search engines for the keywords. Most readers reach them, read the title and the brief description there and involve discussing just there never reaching my page! They are indeed my guests, looking for my content and never reached to me?
Suresh Khanal´s last awesome post ..Sexy Share Plug-in or Widget for Blogger Blogs
I agree with you complete, I don’t like them as well, and not just for SEO reasons, but also as you pointed out, they tell nothing about what is in the link.
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They are bad for seo but fantastic for affiliate marketing, and because there are so many people in the seo world engaged in affiliate marketing they are being used profusely.
I would also add that one reason it can be detrimental to your seo efforts is that it erodes trust from the viewer standpoint. People are more comfortable referring or linking to a url that is plain and simple and easy to remember than one that is composed of funny looking characters.
These funny looking characters does not bud well with viewers and sometimes smacks of fishing or internet trickery
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Absolutley. Which is why I love PLP! See my ComLuv link!
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@ Allison
Just read your post and it is certainly something that can be of great use.
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I have to agree, I think URL shorteners are bad news f0r websites. I only use shorteners on places like facebook or twitter.
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