Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Shortened url vs. anchor text
-
Are there any benefits to linking a shortened url vs. an anchor text when I am link building?Would linking via shortened link such as tinyurl cause problems with SERPS? Also, would it be more beneficial to short link to the homepage or landing page?
-
1. I would stick with links with anchor text. This way, the anchor text acts as a rank factor for your keywords.
2. Depends on what you want. If your keyword/anchor text is general, I prefer linking to the Home. If you keywords/anchor text is specific about a page, I prefer linking to the specific page (landing page).
I don't know what kind of conversion you are doing.
Experienced guys, correct me please.

-
Generally, there's is no benefit in using shortened urls. Quite to the contrary, you would be losing a lot of that linking power.
So, don't use shortened urls for link building.
And to answer your question more generally, it's always best strategy to build backlinks both to the homepage and to some inner pages, using varying anchor text.
Hope it helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are long URLs bad for SEO?
Hi, I would like to know how bad is the long URLs that I have on my website. At the moment we have 543 long urls and I was wondering how big is the impact in my SEO. Thank you
Link Building | | Blind_Foundation3 -
Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links
Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne
Link Building | | NCOREGSEO0 -
What Should be the URL of third party blog for my website
Hi All, What Should be the URL of third party blog for my website. Lets say if i have a website xyz.com (which provide pest control services in New York City) and I want to create third party blogs on platforms like blogspot, weebly etc so should i create the blog url as xyz.blogspot.com or i can use a keyword in the blog URL such as pestcontrolnyc.blogspot.com? Which URL would be the best as per Google's guidelines. Note: I have already have a blog within the domain as xyz.com/blog/ and i do weekly posting on this blog. But at the same time i want to create 1-2 third party blogs to get some backlinks from other sources.
Link Building | | Mr.Suren0 -
Reversing Canonical URLs?
A few months back, we set up canonical URLs on some pages with duplicate content to give some newer pages more link juice. Now, we need to do the opposite and give that same juice to some of the original pages. If we set up canonical URLs on the newer pages to point back to the original pages, are we losing the juice we've been building all along? Sorry for all this convoluted juice talk. Hopefully, my point is getting across here.
Link Building | | frankmassanova0 -
What is keyword rich anchor text?
So, I have searched around the internet but, I still can't find the answer.What is Keyword Rich Anchor Text? Is it basically just exact matching to the page. For example if my page was www.randonmpage.com would a keyword rich anchor text be randompage? Thanks. Peter
Link Building | | PeterRota0 -
Remove links or change anchor text?
I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains). I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)? I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand. Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories. Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ec9awp0 -
Unique Domains vs. Total Links?
At what point is there diminishing returns from getting multiple links from one website? Edit: To clarify, when doing competitor research I come across lots of sites that have say 500 linking domains with 5000 total links. When setting goals and calculating the types of links I should go after, I'm not certain which number is the one actually helping the site to rank.
Link Building | | ErikDster0 -
Index.php OR .php - Which is better for urls
I was wondering. When I build links should I build them using "index.php" OR ".php" at the end? Does one have any more value than the other from an SEO standpoint Example: www.mywebsite.com\hotdogs\index.php or www.mywebsite.com\hotdogs.php
Link Building | | openspan0