How to Create Branded Short Links
Rebrandly manages all your links enabling you to brand, track and share short URLs using a custom domain name.
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There are many advantages to creating branded short links. At first glance, branded links are short links that feature your brand name or an important keyword. Sharing branded links increases link trust, brand visibility, improves SEO which can increase click-through rates by up to 39%.
Creating branded links also builds brand awareness and recognition as people and potential business partners associate your content with a certain branded short link – even if that link actually leads to content by a third party.
There are lots of reasons to share branded links over generic short URLs. If you want to learn more about the major differences of creating branded short links, and generic short links, check out this quick video.
To summarize, branded links are:
Trackable – Why only track links directed back to your site in Google Analytics? Start tracking your audience from their first interaction with your brand. Get real-time individual and aggregated link data and a built-in UTM builder.
Manage links and create a strategy around them – Don’t let links be the low hanging fruit of your marketing strategy. When you understand what types of content, your audience finds most engaging (on social media for example) you’re able to update and maintain your link management strategy.
Get more advanced features – From the ability to edit the destination of the URL even after it’s live, to be able to add a retargeting pixel to your links to attract more top of funnel visitors.
Save time through integrations– It’s difficult to learn and train your team on how to use a new product. Rebrandly integrates with some of the most popular websites and offers extensions and apps for easy rebranding.
And finally – your brand is on your links! – This should be standard, but many of us have become so accustomed to shortening with a generic shortener and the links taking their brand name. But, this is the most important point of using branded links. Not only is your brand name on your links, but – you also own every link. When using generic short URLs – you’re sharing the domain name (say Goo.gl) with anyone else using that shortener. Meaning that your links could be associated with spam.
Unfortunately, not all URL shortening services make it easy or even possible to create a custom link when shortening a URL. TinyURL, for instance, does not allow users to create a customized short link. Bit.ly, one of the most popular URL shorteners, does allow users to create branded links. But it is not the core of their product offering, or what they are focused on.
Introducing Rebrandly
Most entrepreneurs, social media managers, brand managers and the like, are very busy people. While some individuals who own and run a business are tech-savvy enough to use complex tools to create branded short links, most company owners have better things to do with their time.
That’s why Rebrandly was created and it’s fast becoming a popular way to create short links. Rebrandly has offices in the United States and Europe and not only provides link shortening services but also link tracking, link retargeting and link analytics. It also conveniently fits into most workflows, because it’s integrated with other services and offers handy browser extensions.
How to create branded short links using Rebrandly
To use Rebrandly’s link shortening service, simply follow the steps below:
- Create a free Rebrandly account
- Register a new branded domain name on Rebrandly’s domain registrar
- Create branded short links, such as “Brand.Link/Marketing”
- Start sharing them!
That’s it! You don’t need to mess with DNS registration changes or wait a day or two (or even longer) for the changes to take effect.
Additional perks
Learning how to create branded short links with Rebrandly is so simple that even the least tech savvy person can create their own branded links without outside help. Even so, Rebrandly is more than just a custom URL shortener. It also offers loads of perks and features that will help businesses increase traffic and boost sales.
Rebrandly allows you to use a target keyword, making it possible for you to associate your business name and products with the competitive keyword of your choice. This is valuable because it boosts your search engine standing on Google and other search engines.
Rebrandly also makes it easy to track links. You can clearly see important information related to your search engine traffic, making it easy to create and tweak a successful online marketing strategy.
While some companies will only use a single keyword, Rebrandly allows you to create as many shortened URL links as you would like. Doing so enables you to track certain types of links to see which products or services are most popular with your audience. You can associate certain products with their own custom URL for SEO-friendly links and to make it easy for customers to find out more about a particular item, special sale, discount or company-planned event.
Branding is an integral part of any marketing venture. If you create short links, make sure to brand them so you can distinguish your business from the competition. This will also help people build recognition for your company and can boost your search engine standing.
Rebrandly is an integral branding tool you can take advantage of at no cost, and it enables you to create custom short URLs that can be easily shared across all your online marketing channels. What is more, it also offers superb tracking services that enable you to see how many clicks and shares your links receive on an ongoing basis. Check out the image below, which shows just one of the graphs you’ll see when looking at a link’s click data.
Branding your links with other services
WordPress offers several link shortening services. However, they can only be used if you have a WordPress.org website. Other link shorteners, such as Buffer, SocialOomph and Shareaholic all use Bit.ly so you would still need to follow the steps outlined above in conjunction with connecting any one of these accounts with your Bit.ly account. Hootsuite offers a branded link shortening service too. But it’ll cost you. What is more, Hootsuite assumes full control over your branded short link and will not allow you to use it with other services.
Lots of big brands have already made the move to Rebrandly. Check out this post to see some examples. If you have any questions about how to get started creating short links with Rebrandly, feel free to leave a comment below.
Further Reading:
- What is a Branded Link?
- Link management: What it is and why you need it
- The 6 best URL shorteners and how to choose one
- The best free URL shortener APIs
This Article is About:
- Custom Short URLs
- Branded Links
- Vanity URLs
- Create short links
- Create short URLs
Originally Posted: May 2nd, 2017.
Post Updated: February 21st, 2019.
