With Twitter and Facebook’s 140 and 420-character limit, respectively, it is easy to see the reason why some users prefer to use URL shorteners when sharing links to fans, friends, and followers. In terms of search engine optimization wherein optimizing links by placing keywords is advisable, it is important to know how URL shorteners can affect search engine optimization campaigns. Now that Google has recently implemented “real-time search” which display Twitter feeds in the results, it is important to ask whether shortened links are a threat to SEO or not. Let’s find out.
Matt Cutts of Google addresses this issue in a video posted in Google’s Webmaster Help YouTube channel in which he stated that custom URL shorteners function in a similar way as redirects. 301s are permanent redirects and if a crawler sees this in a website, it passes Page Rank to the final destination. Well-behaved URL shorteners such as bit.ly or goo.gl have 301s so users who avail of these services should not worry at all since both Page Rank and anchor text will follow through.
Do URL shorteners pass anchor text?
URL keywords help in search engine optimization but it’s definitely not everything that matters. Often times, when we see a site we’d like to go back to in the future, we bookmark it or directly type in the link if it is not too long and if we remember the URL. Auto-complete options are also available in browsers now. What does this mean? It means that despite finding websites through search engines, having URL keywords is not a necessity to get high traffic.
URL shortening also becomes increasingly helpful when you have a lot of affiliate links. Affiliate links occur as part of affiliate marketing where links are posted in partner websites when they resell your products or services. Managing links become easier when you have a URL shortener to avoid messy pages in your websites.
As stated by Matt Cutts, having 301s are important because it is the safest option when you want to change file names or move pages around in your website. It retains the link juice in the website, sticking to your internet marketing and SEO strategies.
Finally, avoid URL shorteners if the links are not that long. Shorter links work best with descriptive links because it helps drive relevant traffic to your site. Twitter links are meant for short term visibility and shortening URLs when not needed is a bad move for your search engine optimization campaign.
