Top 3 list: Which URL shorteners are best for SEO?

There’s been plenty of discussion around URL shorteners and their impact on SEO over the last few months. Well Google has officially come out and confirmed that “link value” through URL shorteners is preserved as Google treats them similar to a 301 permanent redirect.

Good news for all those people who use URL shorteners and more importantly, it means that much of the link building being done through social media will have long term benefits for your SEO.


So with this in mind, which are the best URL shortening services for SEO:

Goo.gl
This one is direct from Google. Goo.gl’s short URLs are always 301(permanent) redirect making it fast, secure and perfect for SEO. It also provides a great range of stats about the clicker. Google automatically removes spam links from its database, so its building trust from users.

TinyURL
One of the most popular URL shorteners available. It is the default shortener for many social media tools such as Twitter. While Tiny URL doesn’t provide click stats, it does allow you to customize your URL e.g change http://tinyurl.com/47m6g to http://tinyurl.com/yourname.

Bit.ly
bit.ly, like tinyURL has been around for a while and is the trusted default for many tools. It offers a simple one click shortening service with a simple URL tracking feature. This means you can now track Bit.ly shortened URLs by just placing a ‘+’ after the URL. And it also provides URL customization.


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