Anyone actually getting a noticeable SEO boost from a Bitly or TinyURL backlink?

[Rebrandly]

Hi,

I'm looking for an example/use case of someone whose site has been linked to from another using a Bitly, or other generic URL shortener link. I'm specifically interested in proving/disproving the value of the backlink in terms of boost in SEO rankings.

Ideally you somehow got a juicy backlink from a reputable site, but they accidentally linked to you using a Bitly or something, yet you saw a noticeable increase in your pages search rankings, thus proving the value of a Bitly link still passing all SEO value.

Or alternatively, you got that juicy backlink and noticed nothing at all, or not much, and are frustrated that they used a BItly.

I'm launching a study on this soon to identify the possible value behind short links as backlinks.

Yes, I know that Matt Cutts says all short links are 301 redirects which passes something like 99.9% of link juice. I'd just like to see some use cases on this.

Thanks!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Of course I  The anchor text matters. but at the same time is a lot more money to get an enterprise bitlly account and I would not use  bitlly   for everything. I would use regular redirects

[Rebrandly]

Awesome thanks. Do you believe there is any additional SEO value from using a keyword-oriented URL slug for the short link, instead of a random URL slug?

So "/utm-parameters/" instead of "/t4Eo9/" for example.

Or is the shortlink just basically treated like it doesn't exist and literally just used to link the 2 pages?

[BlueprintMarketing]

if the short URL tool uses a 301 redirect, you got 100% of  Link juice as of last week.

I have seen many cases of short URLs redirecting and passing high-quality link juice it works. Ideally, you would have the URL pointing directly at the site I would not want to build a lot of URLs coming from short URLs if you know I mean. But as far as link juice being lost please read this excellent update on Google's new views on 301's

https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo

Hope this helps,

Tom

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