Marketing URLs - when and how to use them

Many years ago when I was working for a global financial services organisation I came up with a strategy which I called Marketing URLs. I developed this as a workaround for the obligatory CMS paths we were forced to use in the server set up. It was less than optimal but in those days usability had not been considered.

Top down view of a Laptop surrounded by cups pens graphs charts and other paraphernalia.

This came to mind today because Jon Henshaw posted on Mastodon that Bitly has changed its policy and is introducing interstitial ads into millions of shortened URLs. Jon followed up with an excellent post on Bitly,

Now, when you click a Bitly link, you will see an ad before reaching the destination site. How this will work with ad-blocking software remains unclear, and its impact on a site's inbound link SEO is yet to be determined. It could be detrimental depending on how Bitly implement it.

Are URL Shorteners good for SEO?

There are many articles stating that url shortening services help your SEO. This is based on ease of use of remembering a shortened url but most links are clicked on so it does not matter how long they are. I really don't believe that URL shorteners help with SEO at all - marketing perhaps. Building brand is a better use of your time

The Marketing URL strategy would help with a lot of these situations, but not all, of course.

Marketing URLs - what are they?

Most websites use directory structures that can include technical directories caused by the way the Content Management System works. You don't see these so often anymore but there are still plenty about.

Example

www.example.com/1/widgets/

The /1/ isn't helping the user - just the system.

A Marketing URL for this would be

www.example.com/widgets/ This then 301 redirects to www.example.com/1/widgets/

On my own site I could have a marketing url for this article: https://www.simoncox.com/post/2019-01-02-using-google-data-studio-to-review-your-http-to-https-migration/

My marketing url would be

https://www.simoncox.com/migration

Go on try it!

This is much more memorable than a bit.ly link, reinforces your brand and you have complete control over it.

How to create Marketing URLs

The first aspect you need to consider is control. One entity needs to be in charge of the Marketing URLs be it a Marketing, IT or, if there any left, a Webmaster.

I used a simple spread sheet that included Marketing URL, destination URL, Requestor, Date implemented.

If it was for a campaign then I would also have a Completion date field and if this was set then the redirect would be a 302, temporary redirect. These did not happen often.

How that is then implemented on your site does depend on the CMS you are using. For this site I am using 11ty so have a hand built redirects file which takes me a few seconds to alter, build and deploy. When I first created marketing URLs I would have to raise a change request and IT department would set up the redirect for me. It was not available in the CMS we used back then!