URL shorteners and SEO

I've thought about it this weekend and spent about 3 hours reading people's opinions and some facts. First I am no expert in SEO, so anyone with such background can give us his thoughts and opinion as well.

From what I've read the URL shorteners that use redirect 301 like bitly are better as they would pass PR juice. However a user on a forum posted this:

"Nofollow will prevent that link from passing PageRank and Google will not include the linked page in their index unless another page links to it also and doesn't use nofollow. Google does not transfer all of the PageRank through redirects. So if a page uses a shortened URL to link to a page then not all of possible PageRank will be "received" by the linked to page. Also, PageRank is per page, not per website. So there is no such thing as a PR4 or PR6 shortener as the home page of the link shortner has the PR4, not the shortened URL. In fact the shortened URL have a PageRank of zero"

We mostly use shorteners for the social media links like those on Twitter and those on Facebook. Those are nofollow, but I was wondering if they did count as backlinks. Turns out they do, when redirected with 301 just like bitly does, but we are forgetting one thing: anchor text. An user from another forum wrote:

"...URL shortners are at a disadvantage because they don't have keywords in the URL which is one of the more heavily weighted ranking factors..."

As I said I am no SEO expert, but if the above statement are the truth, then I leaving the URL shorteners for sure.

any link only gets around 80% of the 'juice' from the linking page anyway so that point is irrelevant. And google does pass link juice through 301 redirects. 301's are safe and recommended.

if a link is nofollow it still counts as a backlink as it still is a backlink, it just doesn't carry any linkjuice. It will still have anchor text taken into account other benefits (it is also very useful to have some nofollow links as it makes your profile look more natural).

For the last point about anchors not being in the shortened url, that is correct. I only use shortners if I have to i.e twitter, but placing keywords close to the shortened url helps to keep the link relevant

hope this makes sense

thebookiesoffers is correct. 301's do pass LJ and nofollows to count...and I'll add that if you have a link to a page or not it will show up in the index.

Additionally, Google passes 99% of the link juice. I say this because I operate in gaming SEO and have tested and retested this a dozen times. When you rank top 10 for "Live Casino" or "bingo" and do a 301 and do not lose rank positions this means it transfers all trust and authority.

The exception to this, which I think your guy that gave you this advice may be thinking of, is internal linking or even subdomains;
- Internal linking like through a silo structured site, or one that has multiple directories or dual-relevance pages, loses a bit of PR the deeper it goes...no new news there
- Creating subdomains passes 80-90% of the PR (or trust and authority as I prefer to call it) to the subdomain. The beauty here is that Google sees this as its own site and can be ranking with alongside the primary in some cases.

A link is a link and you can prove this by using a tool like linkresearchtools and identify nofollow links. Pick a page that has one nofollow link to it and see if it gets indexed. Or you could use your own site. Create a new page (with a very unique string of text) and eliminate the page from being crawled via robots.txt file, buy a nofollow link from Teliad or Backlinks or better yet Fiverr.com for $5, then use Stumble to bookmark it and wait a few days. Search the unique string of text you included earlier and tell me its not there.

I love this type of scenario (usually when I have more time) because I love nothing better than to show these Cowboys that just because they plagiarize and rewrite information they find on other SEO sites or by word of mouth they can still get caught out operating this way.

I would never give this type of advice as its so easy to prove wrong, and its just laziness. Test, retest and have your friends test...then deliver results with concrete evidence. If you look back through my posts like the Social Bookmarking thread or the subdomain thread for bingo.com I did a while back you'll see what I mean. Just do the above, take screen shots and post them on your thread alongside their quote.

With a little luck maybe this person will learn their lesson and help prevent more bad advice like this from circulating.

GaryTheScubaGuy

Ps. Who's going to LAC?

Hi Gary,

Bottom line, I can keep using URL shorteners without no consequences right? I might be going to LAC, depends all on the budget.

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Originally Posted by xecutable

Hi Gary,

Bottom line, I can keep using URL shorteners without no consequences right? I might be going to LAC, depends all on the budget.

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No consequences.

As far as who passes juice and who doesn't; as far as I'm concerned none of them do. Even if their site is #1 for `URL shorteners' they aren't even ranking for your term and there's no anchor text so I don't know what this person is talking about.

Subsequently, even if the site did give anchor text, 301 and followed the link, the degradation of anything they could pass to your site amongst millions of others is worthless.

URL shorteners are good for one thing; shortening your URL's so they fit into 140 characters, to mask an affiliate link, or to just shorten a URL that is ugly because of a lack of a rewrite script.

And before I go I'll mention one more hole in the advice you have received (apparently from a totally different person on a totally different SEO forum???); most URL shorteners have the functionality to add a 'custom alias' to the end of the URL which negates the theory that you can't add keywords to your URL's.

Does it make a difference? Don't know as I haven't tested it. What I can say is that any time you can include your targeted keywords in the URL and they show up in the SERP's they are bolded and stand out more, but I have yet to see a site/page utilising a URL shortener show up in any results.

End of day I'd call these people out on their lack of SEO knowledge or their over-abundance of wrong knowledge...and personally I'd scathe them for steering you and anyone else listening the wrong way.

Everyone's a friggin SEO these days!!!

Cheers
GaryTheScubaGuy

Forgot to summarise;
- If you have keyword rich URL's keep them.
- If you don't look at a rewrite or htaccess file if your on an Apache server.
- Keep your keywords as close to the root file as possible (not 3 directories deep).
- Hand write a site structure that creates categories (e.g. Poker, Slots, Blackjack,etc.) then restructure - these are called silos. It makes it easier to target every keyword phonetically and the SE's eat these up like candy. (I.e. Poker>Poker Games>Free Poker Games>Free Poker Games Tips>) Be sure your internal link structure is absolutely spot on because if you have internal links pointing to multiple pages the rank and PR gets split or one gets de-indexed all together. External back links aren't so much of a worry as google will pick a page but they won't penalise the non-chosen one.
- Run ScreamingFrog and look at all the basic SEO elements and fix them (dupe titles, non-canonicalisation, dupe header tags)


I think that's all for now. The important point is that URL's (at this point) are only good for one thing: shortening URL's (who woulda' thought? :D)

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URL shorteners are good for one thing; shortening your URL's so they fit into 140 characters, or to mask and affiliate link, or to just shorten a URL

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I agree with this, but the properties that run the url shorten programs do not want you to know this....

Rick
Universal4

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Originally Posted by universal4

I agree with this, but the properties that run the url shorten programs do not want you to know this....

Rick
Universal4

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Spot On Rick.

The only time I recommend these is for sites with character limitations or when your URL looks like this;

http://www.IHaveACrapWebsite.com/Go_...MATTER/AFF_Ids and erroneaous_characters_are_also_stop_blocks_for_rob ots/Spaces_do/*^!%&^%!#*^!$#*@!%/audivkatvtc/FIND-ME-IF-YOU-CAN-GOOGLE/I_keep_my_good_on-topic-content-here-where-they-will-never-be-found/.html

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Originally Posted by GaryTheScubaGuy

Forgot to summarise;
- If you have keyword rich URL's keep them.

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How do we do that when twitter I think uses their own link shortener by default now and most URLs show as t.blabla. And one more think, on a personal note what would you recommend if we did not have lengthy URLs? With or without url shorteners?

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Originally Posted by universal4

I agree with this, but the properties that run the url shorten programs do not want you to know this....

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Why is that Rick?

X,

The reason that the url shorten companies do not want you to know the truth is that means you (and millions of other webmasters) would not use them as much and they would suffer with traffic drops and their domains would have less inbound links which would cause their traffic to suffer...

Rick
Universal4

Quote:

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Originally Posted by universal4

X,

The reason that the url shorten companies do not want you to know the truth is that means you (and millions of other webmasters) would not use them as much and they would suffer with traffic drops and their domains would have less inbound links which would cause their traffic to suffer...

Rick
Universal4

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Which means they do hurt our backlink portfolio indeed?

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Originally Posted by xecutable

How do we do that when twitter I think uses their own link shortener by default now and most URLs show as t.blabla. And one more think, on a personal note what would you recommend if we did not have lengthy URLs? With or without url shorteners?

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You are limited to 140 characters. If you can fit your keyword in great, but your thinking seems a bit skewed. The only benefit fron kw's in URL's is the bold (standout) factor. Other than that it passes no link value (whether followed or non-followed) other than what it does with or without kw's in the URL structure.

On the personal note; URL rewrites are very powerful. Having your keywords in the actual URL string (with hyphens or underscores) is a definite algorithm advantage. Search anything in gaming and analyse the top 10 URL's.

They say it doesn't matter, but for many reasons I could prove that wrong.

Keep your URL keywords but match them up with your internal back linking which should already be matched up with your external back link anchor text and you'll have a winner.

My statement has more to do with THEM wanting the backlinks....

Rick
Universal4

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GaryTheScubaGuy

You are limited to 140 characters. If you can fit your keyword in great, but your thinking seems a bit skewed. The only benefit fron kw's in URL's is the bold (standout) factor. Other than that it passes no link value (whether followed or non-followed) other than what it does with or without kw's in the URL structure.

On the personal note; URL rewrites are very powerful. Having your keywords in the actual URL string (with hyphens or underscores) is a definite algorithm advantage. Search anything in gaming and analyse the top 10 URL's.

They say it doesn't matter, but for many reasons I could prove that wrong.

Keep your URL keywords but match them up with your internal back linking which should already be matched up with your external back link anchor text and you'll have a winner.

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I know that it doesn't pass anything, but I was watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhTRuP70kT4 and from what I understood, Google counts social backlinks. I guess my question is, when this URL is shortened and represented by for example bitly, who gets that link as a backlink them or me? If it's them and google counts it, should I feel robbed? Not sure if you understand what I am saying, but this is the best way I can explain it :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by universal4

My statement has more to do with THEM wanting the backlinks....

Rick
Universal4

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I missed this Rick but I definitely agree. I've been doing quite a bit of testing on this as well. It's basically Google Bowling which Google said they eliminated (supposedly) a few years back but I am here to tell you - there are plenty of holes in it amongst the "knowing". In fact, many of the un-knowing get lucky and can kill sites.

Remember a while back when the URL removal bug was exposed?

Basically its directing unworthy spam or porn links to a site that you want to kill. Obviously we all want to kill our competitors site so this left a lot to be concerned about. Google Bowling first cam a relevant topic back in 2005 but I was doing it since 1999. These days and being in the Gaming sector I can't risk it but every client I have wishes and asks for it.

I'll be chastised for giving this simple tip away (but that's just how I roll being American)...go to a site like DigitalPoint or Fiverr and buy 10-20k link packages pointing to a competitors site, use Onlywire, MarketSamurai and Scrapebox to saturate the web with nasty backlinks. You can take it a step further and identify a nasty back link to your site or a competitors, verify it here and you'll find its typically a stoopid tool that searches the web for allinurl:/addurl or something close. These are very bad sites. Add their site.

I could go on and on with nasty things to do with your and my clients competitors, some reasons justified and some not, but at the end of the day I'm not here to promote ill-fated techniques, but to explain what the bad-boys are actively doing.

Check your back links through Majestic or SEOMoz and then run them through another tool like lineresearchtool and identify the risky links. Go to your control panel and block these IP's just as you would an over- hungry robot crawler. I would also ask if they have a manual IP blocker nd if they don't ask about their physical abilities to block an IP. Most server attacks and nasty networks are on free .biz or .info sites, or hosted on a few indiscriminate servers with domain blocking, but they can be identified easily and blocked accordingly.

I'll leave it for that right now.

Post any questions here rather than PM so everyone can see it if you don't mind. Its a great subject.

GaryTheScubaGuy