As the domain you use to create your custom short links doesn't host any content and purely serves the purpose of redirecting visitors to other destinations, the ranking of your short link domain's URLs in Google may not be a priority.
The main domain used for your branded links, and all URLs stemming from it, are 301 redirected to other destinations. These links are really useful for SEO as they meet all the criteria for SEO-friendly URLs. Branded links are beneficial because they are compact, visually pleasing and include a keyword in the slashtag. When a branded link redirects visitors to your main domain, it transfers all the "link juice" to destination URL (eg.: your website) as if they had clicked on a link leading directly to that page.
However, if you're using your branded links for offline marketing campaigns where your audience can't click directly on the link, you may worry that they are typing your short URL into Google's search engine - instead of directly into their browser - and getting no results. In this case, you may want your short URLs to rank in search results.
If you share the link as part of your online marketing as well, it will be indexed as Google's bots crawl the web.
But if you have some links that you use exclusively offline, there is an easy solution. You can index these links by submitting them to Google's webmaster tool. Or if you are using lots of links in your offline marketing, you can create a web page that includes your short URLs and then index this page. Google's bots will crawl through it and index each URL. Update this page each time you create new links for your offline campaigns.
By doing this, your short URL will appear when someone searches for it in Google.
This Article is About:
- Link SEO
- SEO for Offline Links
- Custom URLs in Google Search Results
- Indexing Branded Links to Appear in Google Search
- How to Index Custom Short Links
See Also:
- Should I Connect my Name to Google Search Console?
- URLs for SEO: How to Create SEO-Friendly Links
- What is a 301 redirect
- How to Track Offline Marketing Metrics with Branded Links
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