Bit.ly URLs. Are they SEO Friendly?
-
Are URL shorteners like Bit.ly considered 301 redirects? I was thinking about using them for some longer URL's in press releases but i didn't want to loose any link juice through the service.
Thanks for the info! - Kyle
-
Thank you again for your help, i did some more research and digging and found this: https://bitly.com/pages/help#i_0_1
-
might have to check out that mozbar ! I am surprised not for the first time I guess. I am trying to think how they efficiently make the 301 redirect. Of course php or something can redirect as a 301 silly me. It must be friday.
-
The only issue with link juice is the normal concern with any 301 redirect. Some link juice will be lost, and it will be amplified if multiple redirects are involved.
Try this link: http://mz.cm/vr5WDE
The above link is to this Q&A. Use your mozbar, examine Page Attributes and scroll to the bottom. Notice the bit.ly url is a 301 redirect to this URL. That's what bit.ly is, a 301 redirect service.
Do not automatically assume all services perform the redirect the same way. Always check before committing to any service.
-
Thank you for the response Ryan. So you don't see any issue (specifically with link juice) with using these shortener services to make longer URLs more manageable in off site press releases and articles?
-
Sorry, i accidentally posted this question three times somehow? As i mentioned on the other response, I use Google UTM link tracking to measure how successful articles and press releases are on other websites (linking back to my pages). Sometime these query based URLs get quite long and my client suggested trying bit.ly.
So i was trying to see if anyone had experience with using bit.ly and if they have seen the links pass link juice.
-
URL shorteners like Bit.ly are actually 301 redirects and work as such. You can enter in the URL then examine the page using the mozbar Page Attributes and see the 301 redirect take place.
-
The converted or shortened url as you say gets routed to the old url but I doubt very much if it is possible to 301 redirect this.
I say this because I know of only 2 ways to redirect (if there are others I would like to know !)-
htaccess - cant be modified on the fly and the resources to do this would not make this viable for shortening as we know it.
-
in the head of the webpage html a redirect can be a 301.
I suspect the shorteners are just launching a new url in the same window which matches a database value which gets set, so their domains hijack each request via a standard script check for a match against the database and simply redirect using the stored 'original long url'
I cant see this being a good idea for SEO purposes. Just make the press releases into nice titles which work with your CMS to get some long tail searches.
-
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
-
Same URL for languages sub-directories
Hi All, I have a main domain and 9 different subdirectories for languages, example: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html www.example.com/es/page-es.html we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages, but we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page.html www.example.com/es/page.hrml would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories? would we need to add canonical tags, at lease for the main domain URLs? www.kornferry.com/page.html Thank you, Rachel
Technical SEO | | RaquelSaiz0 -
Canonical URL on frontpage
I have a site where the CMS system have added a canonical URL on my frontpage, pointing to a subpage on my site. Something like on my domain root.Google is still showing MyDomain.com as the result in the search engines which is good, but can't this approach hurt my ranking? I mean it's basically telling google that my frontpage content is located far down the hierarki, instead of my domain root, which of course have the most authority.
Technical SEO | | EdmondHong87
Something seems to indicate that this could very well be the case, as we lost several placements after moving to this new CMS system a few months ago.0 -
Homepage 301 and SEO Help
Hi All, Does redirecting alternate versions of my homepage with a 301 only improve reporting, or are there SEO benefits as well. We recently changed over our servers and this wasn't set-up as before and I've noticed a drop in our organic search traffic. i.e. there was no 301 sending mywebsite.com traffic to www.mywebsite.com Thanks in advance for any comments or help.
Technical SEO | | b4cab0 -
How to start more deep seo.
Okay, lets say that I already fixed all my technical seo stuff. All my crawl errors and warnings are gone. Now I really want to start seo so I have a few questions. 1. I know I should work based on a page and not on a domain, so it means I should choose which keyword to optimize each page for? only one keyword per page? or it might be more? 2. Some keywords are very competitive for me, example for my site www.theprinterdepo.com, the best keyword to rank would be printers, but it would take years a beginner to do that, what should I do? 3. If highly competitive keywords are not an option, which keywords shuold I use? the ones that have more global monthly searches? Thanks
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
URL structure
Hi, I am in the process of having a site created which will focus on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS3 Vita. I would appreciate some advice when it comes to the URL structure. Each category mentioned above will have the following subsections News
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon
Reviews
Screenshots
Trailers Would the best url structure be? www.domain.com/xbox-360/news/news-story-headline
www.domain.com/ps3/reviews/ps3-game-name Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.0 -
Good Seo Titles
Hi. Mybsite is www.theprinterdepo.com and I am trying to find a good template for my product/page titles. Many users search our products by the product model: something like Q2121X. Some other users search by: hp 1320 printer or just 1320 printer. They will almost never search for hp 1320 new, or hp 1320 refurbished. My website is developed in magento, and we have a SEO plugin in which I can put a template for the URL and also a template for the product title. I was thinking for title and URL. title + condition + productmodel However many users search for: "refurbished printers" and maybe its better that our products say something like this: HP 1320 Refurbished Printer, instead of: HP 1320 Printer - Refurbished - Q2121X Please let me know your suggestions.
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Canonical Tag Pointing To The Same URL
Does it matter if a canonical tag points to the URL in which the tag is on? Example Page: http://www.domain.com Canonical tag: rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" /> I only ask because a client of mine has a CMS that automatically does that to every page on the site and there's no way to remove it. Will this have a negative impact or does it not matter at all? Any insights would be great because I can't find a clear answer anywhere online. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Re-write of url
Hi, I would like your input on the following dilemma I am wanting to target the keyword "download xml". at the moment Google indexes us on page 2 and indexes the page www.ourdomain.com/download.aspx I would like to rewrite the url to be /download-xml-editor.aspx The current page is a pr5 and is our most trafficked and externally inked to page. My thoughts are quite mixed on how to do this. approach 1: re-write url of "download.aspx" and setup permanent 301 redirect of download.aspx to download-xml-editor.aspx approach 2: create a new page called download-xml-editor and 301 redirect that to the current stronger page which is download.aspx approach 3: create new page called download-xml-editor with unique content and try and get that page to rank over time, allowing it to build up links and not compromise the current page, then later 301 redirect How would you deal with this and what are your recommendations
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0