Custom short URLs are the shortened and unique link of your WordPress page or post, and website owners have been using it for over a decade. Out of all the other URL users shortening, it’s done to achieve three primary objectives: making the URLs shorter, masking URLs, and gathering click data.
For every post or page you create on your WordPress website, the URLs often turn out long and ugly, which can’t be easily remembered. Thus, developers thought of a way out of this by creating online services, applications, and WordPress plugins that can easily shorten the URLs into pretty links.
In this article, we’ll not only learn of some easy ways to create custom short URLs for your WordPress blog but also elaborate on the three primary objectives behind the URL shortening exercise.
Here’s why you must use a URL shortening service or plugin:
Shortening the URLs:
website owners often undertake URL shortening exercise because it shortens the URLs to comply with the character count limit. For instance, if you’re going full-hog with your Twitter marketing campaign, posting long URLs is never a practical approach. It would help if you shortened the URLs so that you’re able to deliver your tweet within the character limit.
On the other hand, when you post a long link on your Facebook post, the “Read more” option is activated. This can dim the impact of your Facebook message as you will not cover the entire post within a couple of lines. Thus, shortening the URLs is the only way to avoid this problem and make your tweets or posts more impactful.
Shortening the URLs is a convenient way of remembering the links, especially if you want to include the links in your printed media, where you don’t have the option of including UTM tags.
Gathering click data:
URL shortening facilitates easy monitoring of link efficacy and helps you gather click data. Bloggers track the link efficacy using the values like the number of clicks, date, time, browser used, device types, language, and location. You can collect data similar to Google Analytics; however, you can also track the clicks for sites you don’t even own, making URL shortening even more critical. The data you gather for your links helps analyze your content’s impact, including social media posts.
Additionally, there’re other advanced URL shortening services such as short.io and inleven.com, which come loaded with rich features such as password-protected links or retargeting via Facebook pixel.
Masking or rewriting URLs
Rewriting URLs or masking them enhances trustworthiness as online users tend to trust the shorter links more than their longer counterparts. Just imagine receiving a Facebook message or Tweet with a long and ugly-looking URL. It’s highly likely you’ll reject it as spam. On the other hand, if you receive the same message with a short and pretty-looking link, you’re more likely to click on it. Now, this is the trust factor we’re trying to establish by using URL shortening plugins or tools.
Creating custom short URLs using a WordPress plugin
WordPress bloggers are luckier because they have the convenient option of choosing a plugin to help them shorten URLs for their posts and pages. Even though anyone can use the online URL shortening services for free, they give you the option of branding the URLs only if you buy the premium plans. However, if you don’t wish to subscribe to the premium plans or purchase a new domain, you can always opt for URL shortening plugins. Here’s one of the most popular options:
Shortlinks by Pretty Links
Pretty links is a Free WordPress URL shortening as well as link tracking plugin, and you can easily create short URLs for your WordPress website. Here’s a step-by-step guide to do it:
Before using Pretty Links, you need to install the plugin and activate it. Go to the Plugins section and click on add plugin. Next, Add the PrettyLink plugin and click the install now button. Please wait for the Activate button and when it’s highlighted, click on it. Once the installation and activation process is completed, you can start shortening your URLs.
Navigate to the Pretty Links and Add New Link; however, if you’re doing it on behalf of your company, you must create a group for the links you generate. Managing and retrieving the links become easier because as your links keep growing, it’s important to stay organized.
You can do this by moving to the Pretty Links and then clicking on the Groups button. Next, you can organize all the links within the local groups, and after the creation of the group, you can start adding the links.
WordPress Permalinks are not only long, and some of the links even have post date and category names attached to them, which makes them extremely difficult to remember. Affiliate links are worse as they’re available in large numbers, and there’s very little you can do to manage these links manually.
For shortening a large number of links, you must go to the Add New Link menu and provide the required information on the next page. You can also enter the desired short name or slug to be appended to the domain name. After you’ve completed the shortening task, you must save the link. Go to the links page that you’re automatically redirected to for viewing the new custom short URL.
On a concluding note, we would like to reiterate that there are many things to benefit by using the custom short URLs for your WordPress blog, and the good news is that it’s not even expensive. The branded and custom short URLs are easier to share, as well as remember.
Affiliate marketers are highly benefited by using plugins such as Pretty Links because they manage more links than other WordPress blog owners. Some of the other options besides Pretty Links that affiliate marketers can try:
- INRDeals– All in One Auto Affiliate Linker
- Easy affiliate links
- Keywords to Links Converter
- Auto Affiliate Links
- ThirstyAffiliates Affiliate Link Manager
