URL Shortener: Meaning, Benefits & When To Use It

URL shortener help to reduce long and complicated website addresses to a few characters. For example, suppose you create interesting social media posts to engage your target audience and drive traffic to your business website. If you include complicated and long links in every one of your social media posts, you might be letting go of engagement, shares, and clicks.

If you are going through something similar, it might be time for you to consider shortening the URL to make it easier for your audience. Fortunately, you will find several URL shorteners like Short Menu that can reduce the website address by clicking a button.

What Does A URL Shortener Mean?

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is also known as a web address or link, and a URL shortener is a tool used to compress full-length web links and web addresses into a shorter URL.

URL or link shorteners are not new and have been widely used for years. For example, when Twitter limited tweets to 140 characters, these tools became hugely popular. Although Twitter’s character count has increased to 280 characters, compressing URLs remains good for distributing content across social media channels.

What Are The Advantages Of A URL Shortener?

1. It Encourages People To Share The Link

Shortened links are easier for readers to copy, click and share in their social media posts. Therefore, you can expect your content to improve organic exposure across social media platforms. On the other hand, the readers might not share the link if the link is too long and complicated.

2. Short URLs are convenient

It is simpler to share short links than complicated, long ones. For example, if your audience cannot clink the link physically or you’re flashing your website link on a promo video, it is best to use a shortened version of your website URL.

It is much more convenient for people to remember a short URL than a long one. Also, the links instantly become easier to type out on their smartphones or Internet browsers.

3. Shortened URLs Showcase Professionalism

The chances are your target audience is used to seeing content shared across social media platforms that contain shortened links. The practice of shortened links has become so common that the readers will instantly notice if the link isn’t compressed. Long URLs appear to be out of place and seem untidy. On the other hand, shortened URLs appear professional.

4. Offers The Ability To Track Performance

Most URL shorteners offer analytical data and make the information available easily. If you’re wondering why you should care about analytical data, it is because you can track the success of your links through such data. It can help your business understand what your audience is engaging with and adjust your strategies to cater to their needs. Businesses can also understand the reasons why people are clicking on their links. These analytics are crucial in finding the right behavior patterns and determining what the audience truly wants.

Results In Higher CTR

As already mentioned, people are used to seeing compressed links on their social media platforms. Therefore, using compressed links will enhance your click-through rate. It is one of the easiest changes you can make to your social media posting strategy to augment its effectiveness. If you are not convinced, you can try it out and then look at the analytical data. You will notice that this small change is positively impacting your social media posting tactic.

When To Use A URL Shortener?

Compressed URLs are advantageous, but you need to know the right times when you should use a shortened URL. You must use it when posting a website or blog link across several sites on the Internet. Also, you can use shortened URLs in your social media profile’s bio. These links will not take up a lot of characters and space and easily stand out for your audience to take notice of.

However, there are also times when you should not use a compressed URL. For instance, you must not use a URL shortener when linking one page on your website to another website, especially when using anchor text. Moreover, there’s no need to use a URL shortener when sending chat messages or emails to friends. You don’t need to compress the link because you can embed the links in an anchor text or paste it there.

Read | XP Medic – Should You Use This Registry Cleaning Tool?

Conclusion

In summation, URL shorteners are quite handy when compressing lengthy and complicated URLs. Short URLs are easier to share, and they’re memorable. So, if you want your audience to remember your website link or share your link with their friends, you need to reduce the characters of your URL and make it easy to read and remember. However, it would be best if you also kept in mind the times when you don’t need to make an effort to reduce the link, such as when sending an email to your friends.