How to shorten a link that is too long?

Link shortening is important, especially from a marketing perspective. Moreover, long and unreadable links do not inspire confidence not only in readers, but also in crawlers, which can destroy such pages in search results.

Long link, something unsightly, not very measurable, ineffective and possible to “bushwhack”. The number of characters and the brevity of the communication are sometimes the most important prerequisite for communication, such as in the case of text messages., but it is not the only guideline worth looking at.

Why shorten links?

Surely a standard internet user has sometimes come across a link whose structure, to put it mildly, did not inspire much confidence. Probably after sending someone a link someone asked us if it’s a virus and added: xd.

Aesthetics

Overly long links look obviously unsightly, and a string of characters makes it unreadable. Human nature is wary of things it cannot quickly comprehend.

Enjoyable reading

Shorter links look better, which can be used for example in text files. I admit that I myself did not think while writing my bachelor thesis that I could use this, which would help in reducing the content of one footnote to the picture, which contained half a page. In retrospect, I would highly praise the aesthetic advice in this direction.

Social media

In addition to serious reading and less serious academic work, we can also think about the audience of our content on social media. Of course LinkedIn and Twitter themselves shorten links in posts, Facebook lets you embed a link in a post and remove the link, and Instagram on stories lets you dress the link in an overlay that you give your name to. On Facebook, however, you can do that with one link, and on Instagram, links in posts don’t work, so it’s all the better to keep those links short. By the way, it is also worth mentioning the limited number of characters in posts on all social media.

Marketing communication

Apart from the fact that they look simpler and can inspire more trust, they are also easier to remember, which can be useful. Especially in marketing communications, and especially for those involving SMS. In short text messages we also have limitations, usually up to 160 characters. According to platforms like ServerSMS.pl or Redlink.pl it is better to create short and concise messages, limiting the length of the link in particular, which will save text space and visually attract more customers. Although it is worth realizing that not only marketing groups but also criminal groups have taken advantage of this – popular link shorteners are also used by online fraudsters. That is why specialized platforms for this type of communication have their own security and control mechanisms regulating this process.

Measuring campaign effectiveness

Specialized link shortening tools allow you to design a link as a CTA text, e.g. under the form: click.nij, zjedz.this, go through.de, did.is. etc. Placing CTAs

As bluemedia points out.research proves that some call to action inserts can increase click-through rates by up to 90%. And adding a graphic layer to it can in turn increase the conversion rate by up to 40%.

What is more, you can put specific parameters in the links, which will allow you to send information to programs dealing with analytics and measuring the effectiveness of actions on the Internet. I am talking about Google Analytics, Matomo or PiwiK. Implementation of such links allows you to personalize your messages by measuring the effectiveness of communication and segmentation of recipient groups. You don’t have to check only the clicks, a broader analysis examines the effectiveness of all sales and marketing activities. It is possible to discover who and when clicked on a link and went to a landing page. from which device, which operating system, how long they were on the page, where for the longest time and if they made a purchase.

The internet is meant for people and is meant to serve them in the best way possible – this is the official policy of companies providing Internet services. In particular, this applies to publishers of web browsers. Common sense people could add the second part of this maxim, that yes the internet is meant to serve these people as well as possible, by the way keeping them there for longer, taking as much money out of their pockets as possible in the meantime. Content indexing algorithms have been developed for this very purpose. They are making content as optimal as possible. Bots otherwise known as crawlers are content judges, who decide whether a given page is suitable for users in terms of content, technical and visual aspects. Websites that fall into their disfavor lose height in search results, and sometimes life. Algorithms can ban websites if they consider them harmful. This is often due to misunderstood notions of link building, duplicate content or reporting abuse. The crawler experience can destroy the search engine reputation of any site that does not follow the recommendations of. So as we can see, the practice of link shortening is also safe for the portal. God help the wary, but the shortened crawler does not take.

Where can I shorten too long link to the page?

Link shortening is short and intuitive. All you need is a computer and the right website. In the network we can find a lot of tools, thanks to which we’ll be able to get what we want.If you are a professional marketer you should consider using the services of companies that deal professionally with links in communication, which usually have their own tools or subscription packages with other providers. SerwerSMS.pl, Redlink.en. If we ourselves want to lead the battle of shortening links by character heads then we can consider tools such as:

Where I will shorten the link to the site for free?

Fortunately, the internet also abounds with free solutions. These are for example:

    ,/Tiny.en,,,.

Bitly

Probably the most popular link shortening tool. It’s used a lot, even by online stores, so we’ve probably seen the link with the prefix more than once. bit.ly/digital. Just go to the page, paste the link in Shorten and when you click the link is already shortened. We press the copy button and we can send the link leading to the page.

People who subscribe to a subscription will be able to choose a specific word to replace a random string of digits that occurs if they do not have such a subscription.

Example:
https://mobiletrends.pl/nft-i-his-role-in-business/ —–> https://bit.ly/3MEii6x).

With an account, we can check link stats from Bitly by typing + at the end of a link from that domain.

Tiny URL / Tiny.en

Tiny URL and Tiny.pl is a twin feature to Bitly. We need to go to. Paste the link you want to shorten, click Make Tiny URL/Cut and you’re done. In case of the first tool, however, we have to set some kind of alias, i.e. a name, after the file.

Example:
If the alias is the word mobajtrends, the link will look like this: https://mobiletrends.en/realityos-od-apple-concept-unsurpassed / —–> https://tinyurl.com/mobajltrends

Sniply

As far as Sniply is concerned, it stands out from other services because of one important feature from marketing point of view. Allows you to create CTAs! A call to action is possible for each link we shorten. However, in the free version its use and functionality are limited.

In some subscriptions you can create forms or even pop-ups with graphics where you can insert a link with a CTA button. Sniply also allows you to track traffic and analyze links, as well as create a hidden CTA that will not be displayed to internet users.

Google URL Shortener

A tool from Google, which can be installed as a browser plug-in, after selecting which page we are on will immediately receive a shortened link.

Google provides also the possibility to preview the statistics of shortened addresses. Previously via goo.gl, but now they are available in firebase.google.com. You can see data about the clicks and their source, as well as information about the device on which the link was clicked and how many people visited our site from computer and how many from mobile.

Shortening links – no cutting

Whether a link is too long or not is rather dictated by the context of use and the form in which it is presented. So if in our opinion a link is not too long, or it is long, but there is no need to shorten it, we can certainly do without it.