Part of what makes the world wide web go round is sharing links – be it on social media, websites, and other channels that encourage people to explore your content. However, adding these links to your emails or social media posts can stick out like a sore thumb amidst the text, images, or video it’s attached with, drawing negative attention by cluttering up your copy. 

That’s why link shortners were introduced as a straightforward solution. Just as the moniker suggests, it aims to make the URLs more manageable by replacing the long text with a short version. This is highly beneficial in social posts that are following strict character limits, such as Twitter. 

While link shortening is a simple tool, it provides benefits that can improve various aspects of your SEO strategy: 

Benefit #1: Enhance Your SERPs

Shortening links isn’t just to make URLs look easier on the eyes, but it has a surprising impact on your website’s rankings. While it doesn’t directly affect how to google’s bots analyze your site, there are factors in link shortening that contribute to higher SERPs.

Including a short keyword in your URL, for instance, can do wonders in boosting your visibility as it can act as a ranking factor. It also helps the audience and crawlers alike determine its relevance since it provides cues to your content in relation to a search query. 

Benefit #2: Short Links are Easier to Monitor Click Data 

The only purpose of link shortening is to make URLs more manageable in the early days of URL shortening services back in 2000, but it becomes more sophisticated through the years. Now, it offers link tracking, which attaches various data in the links to help you monitor the following data: 

• Total clicks
• Referrers 
• Location 

This invaluable information can help you measure your site’s metrics and identify areas that work or need improvement.

Benefit #3: Short Links Improve the Browsing Experience 

Your website is likely growing along with your business, which means scalability is crucial as you make more room for new categories, pages, and sections in your site. One way to make the expansion much simpler is to shorten your URL structure, which ensures the seamless transition between different links on your site.

Not only does it help search engine bots read your site, but it also helps create a logical and smooth-sailing web experience. 

The Bottom Line: Shortening Links Can Make Your URL SEO-Friendly

Shorter URLs not only looks good, but it creates a tidal wave of positive results for your SEO by making sharing easier across multiple social channels. It also enables you to include a targeted keyword that can give readers some insight about your page, generating user trust, and improving your search engine rankings all at once. 

If you’re looking to bump up your ranking in search engines, we’re the best and affordable SEO agency in the UK to call. Contact us to leverage our AI-powered services!