Businesses don’t want to make their profile busy with long links to their websites, especially when those links include tags that make them look messy and confusing. That’s why they use a link shortener. The purpose of a link shortener is to help shorten the link of your website and make the address recognizable and easier to track. You can promote brand value as the short URL links create trustworthiness among the users and thus enhances your click-through rates. In a recent study, they found 39% more engagement for short URLs versus long URLs. So, whenever you plan to increase conversions for your company with the help of social media marketing, email marketing, and other digital tactics, the name of the game is engaging, connecting, and attracting customers to your product.
A number of free and paid link shorteners exist and sometimes it’s hard to figure out which one is best in your situation. That’s where we come in. Listed below are the top 7 link shorteners to help you decide.
Why do you need a link shortener?
We all know that a URL tells a search engine where to find your content. It’s like an address. URLs get pretty long sometimes, especially if you use tags to help track your links. For instance, if you add a tag to an email link, the URL might look like:
https://hausmanmarketingletter.com/free-diy-website/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer
That’s just too much. Even including this in an email where all the user sees in a link, the URL pops up and, for those seriously concerned over privacy and security, seeing this long URL is offputting.
1. Shrink your links
As the name suggests, link shorteners are for shortening the links that you provide on social media and other sites. These are used for various purposes. For example, if you put a post on Facebook, you have limited space for the description and long URLs hide some of that description behind a see more link. On Twitter, with its character limit, you can’t fit your message AND a long URL. So, if you shorten your link through any shortening platform have more space for your message.
2. Gather click data
Checking the effectiveness of the link in generating clicks is very important. While you shorten the URL links, you can use some shorteners to capture click-through data such as the click rates, the websites through which the clicks come, the language used, location, date and time, etc. The tools that we present below are a reliable means to track your link performance.
3. Sharing links
Links that are shortened become easier for sharing on social media and other digital platforms. On physical materials, a link shortener makes your URL more memorable if the consumer wants to visit the site later and easier to enter into a mobile device. You can even brand your shortened link using some shorteners, which helps you gain brand recognition throughout the places where you share your links.
Some of the top link shorteners
1. Bitly
Bitly is one of the most heavily used tools for shortening links and is thus the most familiar to most of you. You won’t realize it until you use it. Bitly gives you access to whatever is happening in your account such as the number of clicks on your account or where those clicks come from. You can customize the number of characters in your link or create QR codes that take users to your website with a click of the camera on their mobile device.
Bit.ly offers a free version or you can upgrade to one of several paid versions with more control and benefits, such as branding. Big brands such as Disney, ESPN, and others use this link shortener.
2. Pixelfy
Pixelfy is the best URL shortener platform if you want maximum shrinkage of your links. After you put the link in pixelfy, it shortens the link and enables you to track the number of clicks and the sources of clicks, which helps optimize conversions. It organizes your links. You can create a strong relationship between your brand and customers with the help of shortened URLs. Research suggests you can achieve an enhanced click rate that’s, on average, 35% higher through shorter links. Short links get more traffic and customer engagement.
3. Clkim
Clkim is a flexible link shortener platform featuring a lot of options. It helps you to bring the maximum number of links using the following
- URLs that are short branded
- Ads create link monetization
- Users and building their list
In Clkim the best thing is that it’s customizable and the setup takes just 2 minutes. This platform Is available 24/7 with the best support team to make this product a top list choice.
4. Blink
Airbnb and Ray-Bans are among the big companies which use Blink. The app is best for analyzing and tracking the links which is easy to integrate into your ecosystem with their API. There are a lot of resources available with this tool to help you get the most from the platform.
Blink also offers the option to upgrade with time. This platform allows you to pay for the features you want now and then upgrade them later. The most important thing is that it has an IOS app and Chrome extension, which makes your work easier. Another thing to add is that Blink maintains security for enterprises, which keeps your data and everything else safe.
5. Tiny URL
The best platform you can get for link shortened is Tiny URL as it gives you access to their URL box straight out of the gate. You get to enter your links into a box on the website and get a short link free and without requiring registration. Tiny URL takes an effort to change your long links to short links free of charge and without the hassle of other options.
This platform lets you do the work as fast as possible and that makes it one of the leading link shorteners.
This platform does not have a lot of fancy features but contains many essential ones. If you just have to work to shorten one link occasionally and don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, then a Tiny URL is the best platform for you.
6. Owly
The Ow.ly platform works best with Hootsuite and it’s known as one of the best link-shortening platforms for those users. Due to some security concerns, Ow.ly is only found in the Hootsuite dashboard.
The best thing is you can use it easily and start it with a free subscription. It gives you access to shorten the links in a measure of traffic, ROI, etc.
7. Tinycc
Tinycc allows you to do various things with URLs like shorten them, track them, and also manage the URLs. It also gives you access to check on new and old clicks as well as the browser that generated the click. Tinycc requires a sign-up process to create an account and due uses your account to make it easy to check on the link history and manage them through tags, filters, etc.
The best thing about Tinycc is that it shortens your link along with your brand name or domain, which makes your link look very good, trustworthy, and memorable. That service is free but if you want you can also use the premium plan of Tinycc.
Conclusion
In this article, we learned about URL shorteners. There are URL shorteners that you can use to minimize your links and keep your posts spacious and clean. It is a mixture of various advantages that make URL shorteners popular. These shorteners can take your company to the next level by shortening links on social, streaming, and other digital collateral, while providing tracking that helps you optimize performance. Go ahead and choose one of these to boost your online marketing.
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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.
