• Tweet

URL shorteners, web tools that essentially shorten your original links by redirecting them through a URL that is much shorter, are extremely handy and the more people use them, the more new ones seem to sprout up.

Not only that but a few of the best shorteners have added tracking software that counts the number of times your link was clicked, where the link was clinked on the web, and in the world. Essentially you can see what your audience is interested in and what types of links they have a tendency to click over others [video/media, articles, blog posts, etc].

Top Three URL Shorteners (In Our Opinion)

1. bit.ly
2. goo.gl
3. ow.ly (a.k.a Hootsuite)

Personally, we really like bit.ly over the others here at Black Dog Education. URL shorteners these days all do essentially the same things: shorten the links and provide similar analytics. But, bit.ly stands out for us because we think it’s the most user-friendly and provides the best data is an easily digestible way.

Bit.ly Breakdown

There is a lot to bit.ly – more than I can go into in a brief blog post, but here’s some of the best aspects of this URL shortening tool.

• Sign up is easy – nothing to download or buy.
• URL shorteners are mainly used for Twitter in order to keep tweets under 140 characters. BUT, Twitter tracking software usually requires some kind of monthly fee. Bit.ly is free and for a free service the tracking is pretty first-rate.
• A daily breakdown of each link can be viewed individually by clicking “Info page.”
• See what time of day links were clicked.
• Weekly breakdowns all total clicks are found at “Link History” on the left of the page.
• Find out what days of the week your fans and followers are engaging with your links.

Like I said, this is really our preference, but goo.gl and ow.ly are both great tools to use. It all depends on how you like to view data and what particular data you are most interested in collecting. Either way, try using a URL shortener – it’s a simple and free way to track and analyze traffic.