3 very important reasons why you should use a link shortener

Are you using a link shortener for your website links and affiliate links? If not, you should be! And it’s easy to do.

You can choose to use a web-based link shortener like TinyURL, Bit.ly, or ShortURL. Or, you can install the GoCodes plugin for WordPress or a free script like Shorty on your own domain and stay in control of your affiliate links. Using your own domain as the basis for your short links allows you to link to your site, build your brand, and control where links point.

There are three important reasons why I suggest bloggers and online business owners shorten their links.

1. They facilitate sharing on social networks.

Especially on Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to share your thoughts, every character counts! A long URL can take up half of your space if you’re not careful. By shortening the link, you give yourself more room to “talk” and also make it easier for others to retweet your tweet and share it with their followers.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks also have limits on the number of characters each of your status updates can have. Don’t waste your space with long URLs.

2. They allow you to protect your affiliate links and update them as needed.
If you promote affiliate products, you want to protect your affiliate links to get credit for sales you refer to a product or service.

With a regular affiliate link, you might have something like

www.somedomain.com/?yourcodehere
that’s easy for someone to just go straight to the domain. Worse yet, unscrupulous marketers can take your tweet or status update from a social network and share it, but with your code instead of theirs! Using a shortened link prevents someone from easily removing your affiliate code. Of course, they can still change the link entirely, but why make it easier for them?

Another circumstance where shortened links that you can control are good is if you are promoting affiliate products and your recommendation changes. If you have a link to

www.yourdomain.com/bestwebhost
and today you are promoting SuperHost123, you can use your shortened link to point there. If SuperHost123 goes out of business or finds a better option at BestHost789, you can easily change your link to point to your new recommendation, and the same short link will still work.

3. You can track your links to see what is being clicked.

Using some link shorteners gives you an easy way to track how many clicks your links are getting. With HootSuite’s link shortener, if you choose ow.ly to shorten, you can easily access statistics on how many times your link was clicked and when. Using the GoCodes plugin for WordPress also allows you to see how many times your links have been clicked.