Shortened URLs ??
-
Anyone have any insight into how shortened URLs affect SEO?
I use Bitly occasionally for shortened links and was curious if this matters for any reason at all?? I basically use it so I can fit the links in places where long URLs look absurd...mostly social media platforms.
I know there's some debate over whether the domain name affects ranking or not. Frankly, that all just goes over my head.
Any thoughts welcomed!
-
I agree with sir here as most people consider these URLs are spammed but yeah normally good shorten URLs are 302 so there is no impact of it on the original URL you want your audience to land on!
Just a quick participation!
-
Lots of people dislike shortened URLs because they can't determine the destination. They do not trust them. I don't click them.
-
Thanks so much for the thorough response!
I am mainly using Bitly for Tweets - basically for character count purposes. I don't assume any of the companies I tweet for will ever go viral, so I will be sure to curb my use of them.
-
Hello Adam, They most certainly can affect your site's SEO. Every time you create or distribute one of your Bitly shortened URL's you're creating a 301 redirect (From Libya) back to your site. Using Url shorteners is also a spam tactic too. Spammers get their URL shortened by every Url shortening service on the net as a means of sending links back to their sites. It's a very easy way to get 100's of new links pretty quickly, but don't expect the money site to last for long.
On domains I care about, I always try to keep the threshold of 301's against my domain name very low. If my domain is two years old and only has one inbound 301 pointing to it, then I have done my job. You must understand that 301's are one of the most sacred black hat tactics. The minute your domain begins to accumulate an above average amount of inbound 301's expect trouble.
Some sites have 1000's of 301's from legitimate domain migrations because they moved their huge eCommerce site from one domain to another. Google understands this, however, lately even these legitimate authority sites are having trouble maintaining their rankings after domain migrations. Having scores of inbound 301's from URL shorteners isn't optimal in my opinion.
As always, there are exceptions to the rule and it applies to social media in this scenario. If you Tweet a shortened version of your Url and the Tweet goes viral, then it's a little different. If the Tweet gets embedded in 1000's of sites Twitter feeds because they retweeted your tweet, then it's good to have a heap of inbound 301's. It now sounds contradictory I know. But Google can tell the difference, and more often than not, a viral Tweet often spreads to high-quality sites.
The short version of this answer is that 301's are used heavily by dark grey hat Seo's. The less inbound 301's to your domain, the better.
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
-
Should one end URLs with or without a slash?
Moz, I am noticing that I need to go back and update my outbound links to your site. There are a lot of them because your content is so great and we love you guys. Could you explain your logic for making the change? Example on my Valid JSON-LD image sizes page: [https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed/](https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed/) redirected to: [https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed](https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed)
Algorithm Updates | | jessential0 -
Are SEO Friendly URLS Less Important Now That Google Is Indexing Breadcrumb Markup?
Hi Moz Community and staffers, Would appreciate your thoughts on the following question: **Are SEO friendly URLS less important now that Google is indexing breadcrumb markup in both desktop and mobile search? ** Background that inspired the question: Our ecommerce platform's out of the box functionality has very limited "friendly url" settings and would need some development work to setup an alias for more friendly URLS. Meanwhile, the breadcrumb markup is implemented correctly and indexed so it seems there's no longer an argument for improved CTR with SEO friendly URLS . With that said I'm having a hard time justifying the URL investment, as well as the 301 redirect mapping we would need to setup, and am wondering if more friendly URLs would lead to a significant increase in rankings for level of effort? Sidenote: We already rank well for non-brand and branded searches since we are brand manufacturer with an ecommerce presence. Our breadcrumbs are much cleaner & concise than our URL structure. Here are a couple examples. Category URL: http://www.mysite.com/browse/category1/subcat2/subcat3/_/N-7th
Algorithm Updates | | jessekanman
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 Product URL: http://www.mysite.com/product/product-name/_/R-133456E112
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 > product name The "categories" contain actual keywords just hiding them here in the example. According to my devs they can't get rid of the "_" but could possible replace it with a letter. Also they said it's an easier fix to make the URLs always lower case. Lastly some of our product URLS contain non-standard characters in the product name like "." and "," which is also a simpler fix according to my developers. Looking forward to your thoughts on the topic! Jesse0 -
Anchor name URLs & anchor blocks: how Google sees them?
Hi guys, Anchor name URLs & anchor blocks: how Google sees them? As far as I know Google hasn't ever recommended anchor name URLs and anchor blocks, mostly when you have one page site, but I have ran into an organic result with an hyper-link to an anchor name URL. anchor name link There is a proper link and there aren't on the page and the code the words "Jump to". It means Google has put those words there and it has also taken the header of that block as anchor text. Why has Google placed that link? The query is "faqs umbrella company", so I thought that Google has seen "faqs umbrella company" like "what is the most popular faq about umbrella companies?" and therefore perhaps the correct answer could be "Is an umbrella company the only option I have? What are the alternatives?". Although, IMHO the most popular FAQ on Umbrella Companies should always be "what is an umbrella company". Unfortunately, that page is only worthy of third Google organic result page and there is no hint of rich snippet or any kind of conversational/KBT optimisation on its source code. no-rich-snippet Someone has any idea of why Google shows that link and if it's something that we can optimise in our pages? Cheers Pierpaolo IhwGwkb.jpg VWORt5F.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | madcow780 -
We recently transitioned a site to our server, but Google is still showing the old server's urls. Is there a way to stop Google from showing urls?
We recently transitioned a site to our server, but Google is still showing the old server's urls. Is there a way to stop Google from showing urls?
Algorithm Updates | | Stamats0 -
Increased 404 and Blocked URL Notifications in Webmaster Tools
In the last 45 days, I am receiving an increasing number of 404 alerts in Google Webmaster Tools. When I audit the notifications, they are not "new" broken links, these are all links that have been pointing to non-existent pages for years that for some reason Google is just notifying me about them. This has also coincided with about a 30% drop in organic traffic from late April to early May. The site is www.petersons.com and its been around for a while and the site attracts a fair amount of natural links so in the 2 years I've managed the campaign I've done very little link-building. I'm in the process of setting up redirects for these urls but why is Google now notifying me of years old broken links and could that be one of the reasons for my drop in traffic. My second issue is my I am being notified that I am blocking over 8,000 urls in my Robots file when I am not. I attached a screenshot. Here is a link to a screenshot. http://i.imgur.com/ncoERgV.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | CUnet0 -
Geo Target Location in your URL Structure
Hello everyone at SEOMOZ 😄 I have a question if you would be as kind as to inform me of which direction that I should take on this matter would be the more desirable approach for my seo strategy I have been using my location in my URL structure since I started doing SEO 5 years ago and I have always benefited from including my city in the URL. My question is, since the SEO landscape has change so drastically over the past 2 years and the Search Engines have become much more end user friendly and list suggestions for users as they type would it be more beneficial in 2013 to have the "Keyword" before or after the Geo Targeted Location in the URL structure? I own a computer repair business for the past 6 years now and I know that when i check to see where I am ranking for a particular keyword phrase such as "Computer Repair" GOOGLE detects my location and provides suggestions as I start typing out "Computer Repair" for the search query. One of the suggestions is "Computer Repair Wilmington NC" so I am starting to wonder if placing the Geo Targeted City after the Keyword would be the wiser choice instead of before it like a couple of years ago? Working Example: Here is a site that I am building out right now to re-brand my business. Currently I have one of the Silo Category Slugs set as seen below using the Location before the Keyword The First Example has the Geo Target Location before the Keyword and looks more natural to visitors on the site (at least to me) however I'm afraid that I may be shooting myself in the foot not placing the keyword before the Target Location? But if I do that, It does not read or flow fluently to the average looker so kinda confused and torn on how to deal with this>! FIRST EXAMPLE: Location Before Keyword Silo Parent Category = "Computer Repair" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/wilmington-nc-computer-repair/ Silo Child Category = "Laptop" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/wilmington-nc-computer-repair/laptop-repair/ Silo Grand Child Category = "LCD Replacement" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/wilmington-nc-computer-repair/laptop/lcd-screen-replacement/ **SECOND EXAMPLE: ** Keyword Before Location Silo Parent Category = "Computer Repair" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair-wilmington-nc/ Silo Child Category = "Laptop" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair-wilmington-nc/laptop-repair/ Silo Grand Child Category = "LCD Replacement" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair-wilmington-nc/laptop-repair/lcd-screen-replacement/ Which would be the more favorable of the 2 examples that I have given please? Keyword before or After the Geo Targeted Location? thank you
Algorithm Updates | | MarshallThompson310 -
URL Importance In Search
This may have been addressed before. If it is, please link me to the thread. I'm trying to SEO for local surrounding cities my client services. It was suggested I purchase domains relevant to those cities and create separate pages optimized for those local keywords. Wondering if this is a good tactic. For example my client's business is located in Chicago, but services the surrounding suburbs of Chicago. Whats the current, best way to SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | severitydesign0 -
Is URL appearance defined by crawling or by XML sitemap
I am having a problem developing a sitemap because I have long URLs that are made by zend. They go like this: http://myagingfolks.com/professionals/20661/social-workers/pennsylvania-civi-stanger Because these URL's are long and are fed by Zend when I try to call them all up, to put on the sitemap, the system runs out of memory and crashes. Do you know what part of a search result, in google, say, comes from the URL? Would it be fine for me to submit to google only www.myagingfolks.com/professionals/20661. Does the crawler find that the URL is indeed http://myagingfolks.com/professionals/20661/social-workers/pennsylvania-civi-stanger or does it go with just what the sitemap tells it?
Algorithm Updates | | Jordanrg0