Shrink your unsightly Links.
Being neat and organised is a key way to send a clear message on the internet to a person reading a comment or an article that there is someone who cares about how his or her content is perceived. So it vital that at times that you shorten long unsightly website addresses, as the default snippets of codes that we receive are often times unsightly.
As an example this URL Leads to an article we did recently on Super Expensive items on Amazon :
http://www.blogtechtips.com/2014/02/15/most-expensive-items-amazon-filthy-rich/
How about if I was placing the address on a website such as YouTube, would you click on it? The Answer is probably no,or unless you absolutely had to. The idea is that unsightly long URL’s reduces the chances of potential visitors clicking on your link so do yourself a favor and trim those links up.
Now look at this shrunken down version of the link above:
http://tinyurl.com/kvzsyce
This version is much more convenient and clickable don’t you think?
How to shrink your Links the Fast way
The fast method to shrinking a URL that does not involve signing up to a service is to use tinyurl.com. This was what was used to create the shrunken link above. Follow the instructions below to crate your own shrunken link:
1. Go to tinyurl.com by clicking here.
2. In the box on the home page that says: Enter a long URL to make tiny, enter your desired URL or webpage address that you want to shrink by copy and pasting it.
3. Click on Make TinyURL! (or add a custom unique alias that never been used before)
4. The results page should show the original URL for reference and two shrunken down link versions. Choose the first of the two by clicking on copy to clipboard.
5. After copying to clipboard you may paste the new Shrunken URL where you please as a clickable link eg. YouTube comments.
In case you are not familiar with how to make a link clickable in the place you want to place your clickable link, you may follow our guide on making clickable links here.
Shrink your links and track clicks and other statistics
Bitly’s daily statistics on your Shrunken link.
To add another layer of control over your links you may choose to shrink your links and track user activity on the links you have created. This can be very useful for those who use affiliate programs such as Amazon associates to see which articles are getting attention and which links readers are clicking the most.
To track your shrunken link statistics you will need to create an account with: Google URL Shortener or Bitly.com. Each are unique programs in there own rite and can be used to create short URL that can be tracked. For Google URL Shortener your regular Google account is all that needed and for Bitly the signup link can be found in the upper left hand corner of the screen beside the sign in button. For either account create an account and paste your URL in the designated box and shrink the link.
Examples of URL’s shortened by:
Google Url Shortener: goo.gl/OZqFRU
Bitly.com: http://bit.ly/1hCusIV
Bitly.com (Amazon Affiliate link) : http://amzn.to/1gM3nRv
Link shrinking is not only a great way of keeping things neat, but it’s a life saver in tracking statistics and figuring out what working for you or not. So readers what your preferred URL shrinker or shortener? As always your input is very important so feel free to comment away.
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