Tiny URL

actually, i'm also not sure about that. But i often use Tiny URL especially when I'm updating my twitter.

I use it on twitter too...but I am doing articles and I want to use the tiny URL because the long tail keywords I am going to use on some of the resource boxes get too long with the normal url, just do not want to send out a bunch of articles and not have the links count for link juice.

Here's a post on pros and cons of different shorteners. SearchEngineLand also has a guide that also includes the redirect method. If they're using 301's the link juice should be passed. That article has a good summary after the chart.

The best thing to do would be to create a redirect on your own site (so you have yoursite.com/linkname) instead of going through an external service. That way you have more control and get some branding in for your domain. Just make sure to use a 301.

I wanted to do that and I did install a system on my domain to do this, but the system had all kinds of errors on it. Can you recommend on that I can install on my systems?

Really need to find a solution as I am using a system for sending out my articles and while it is really good, my max resource box is 340 characters which was not a problem with regular keywords, but I am now integrating long tail keywords and with the domain it is just so long I have no room for text in the resource box.

The system I am using is Unique Article Wizard Works really well with building links and it spins the content so it is original content. I am also getting content sent to my blogs using an Unique Article Wizard Plugin that I want to use the URL redirects on too.

Any suggestions or recommendations you can offer would be appreciated.

No, I am not interested in doing my own URL service (at this time anyways).

The reason I want this is that on the Unique Article Wizard system, they limit me on the number of characters in the signature box to 340. If I use my normal keywords, this problem does not exist.

By the time I put the long tail keywords I plan to use, along with the link, the 340 characters have nearly been used up and I am not able to put any text to speak of. If I use a tiny URL set up, this takes care of the length problem, but leaves the problem that I am now reliant on a 3rd party for the links I am building.

If they decided to close the site, turn off the links, make them no follow, whatever, then all the work that has been done to build the links is lost.

If I have the system on my site then that can not happen and even if there was a problem with the link being reduced, the link would then be a 404 error which I have redirected to the index page of the site, so it will not be a dead link.

That is my plan anyways...

I am not that advanced in web stuff, but from what I understand about a 301 redirect, I set that up on my site to redirect traffic from a page that has been moved/removed to a new permanent address. I do not know how this will assist with the tiny URL issue. Please clarify

I just thought it would be a good alternative to have a tiny url generator on my domains to create the tiny urls as they are needed as apposed to a 3rd party application.

I am just trying to find the best solution for the resource box limit is all, without having to be concerned with a 3rd party link service.

Thanks Megan.

I understand what you are saying now...thanks.

Now I just need to lean how to set up the redirect as I have never done this before. Thanks so much, this is much more comfortable to do as apposed to relying on a 3rd party!

This will give the same link juice to the page that they are being directed to right?

Can I ask you, is this correct? I insert this into the .htaccess file on the root directory below everything else.

redirect 301 /immfinancial.com/AR.htm http://immfinancial.com/Accounts_Receivable_Finance_quote.html

This way I can make the "short url" http://immfinancial.com/AR.htm and the redirect will take them to http://immfinancial.com/Accounts_Receivable_Finance_quote.html.

Then I repeat the same function for each category/page I want to do the standard redirect for.

Is this correct?

Thanks so much Megan.

Wade

This is exactly what I entered 1 line below the existing text in the .htaccess file on my main directory:

redirect 301 /immfinancial.com/ar.htm http://www.immfinancial.com/Accounts_Receivable_Finance_quote.html

It does not do anything, I followed the instructions on http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm I believe, but I get a 404 error. Suggestions?

If the short url and the long url both point to identical pages within the same domain you would be better off using canonicalization.
This basically tells the search engines that the two pages are identical, and passes the link juice from one page to the other (nice huh). It also has the added bonus that you will not be penalised for duplicate content for the two identical pages.
All you need to do is insert
rel="canonical" full_original_long_url_goes_here
into the head tag of the page on your short url.
(this only works for pages in the same domain)
You can also use this attribute on index pages
For example:

domain/index
domain/folder/index

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the suggestion Nick, but I do not have identical pages, there is just the one set of form pages I want to link to using a shortened url as apposed to the long one.

I am not very advanced at this yet, really just figuring it out as I go, and I just need a way to create a short url to direct to the longer url pages as they have important forms that I use.

I did try the 301 redirect as shown above, but it is not working for some reason, if someone could tell me what I have wrong in the code above I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Wade

Thanks for all your help...I have it working properly now.

Wade

Have a look on http://www.onodot.com Cloaking on subdomains doesn't look like cloaked url. This tool also masking url.

I used the 301 redirect and it works perfectly. I had to contact my host company as there were some quirky things I had to do to make it work, but I now have a couple of shortened urls that I use that work great. I created http://immfinancial.com/ar.htm to connect to http://immfinancial.com/Accounts_Receivable_Finance_quote.html and http://immfinancial.com/pf.htm to connect to http://immfinancial.com/Project_Financing_quote.html.

It is not as short as using the tiny url generators but this way all the links are to my site, not a 3rd party site that I have no control over.

Thanks for the help everyone!