The URL shorteners are widely used nowadays for an advanced marketing strategy and automated tasks. The short links' importance is evident, especially once social networks started implementing their personal short domain for vanity links.
However, most people are afraid of using short links, thinking that the website SEO will be hurt. On the Short.cm blog, we've briefly described how short links affect SEO and if there is a reason to worry.
Do Short Links Affect SEO?
Custom URL shorteners operate just like any other redirect. If we try to crawl a page and see a 301 redirect, it will pass page rank to the final destination. The link shorteners operate the same way. The vast majority of well-behaved URL shorteners have good uptime and use a 301 redirect to pass the page rank. This allows transfering both page ranking and link juice without hurting SEO.
Google will take into account links with 301 redirect when ranking pages. There isn't any harm to your SEO when using custom URL shorteners. The page rank will flow through, the link juice will flow through, and so you don't need to worry about that at all.
What Redirect does Short.cm use?
Short.cm uses a 301 redirect. However, you can manage HTTP redirects by yourself. Choose a rule for redirection according to your needs. Here are the four options to select from:
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301 Permanent — for pages moved permanently. Useful when you migrate from an old website to a new location. The search engines will update the index, and the page will be permanently moved to the new URL.
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302 Standard — the default behavior. Users will be redirected to a new location without cache. Search engines will follow the original URL.
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307 Standard — for forms submission. Useful for tracking form submissions. The browser will visit a short URL first and then submit the form.
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308 Permanent — for form submissions with a permanent redirect. Useful for form submissions with HTTP POST/PUT redirect. All POST data, which was sent to the short URL, will be submitted to the destination URL.
Wrapping Up
Short links let you improve website SEO, as URLs are short and contain a customized slug. To learn more about how to use short links for better SEO, read the article below.
How Short Links Improve Your Website SEO
ReadWhat did you learn?
- how to improve the website SEO;
- how short links influence SEO;
- do short links harm SEO;
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