How to get branded domain shortlinks for free
We need to talk about shortlinks.
If you, like me, care a LOT about how your brand is presented, you probably don’t like long, complex URLs. They’re an eyesore on a page, hard to remember, and just look messy.
I’ve been using bit.ly links as my preferred URL shortener for years. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, bit.ly allows you to paste a long URL which can then be shortened into a bit.ly/(random) link.
If you signed up for a free bit.ly account, you could also change that random string of letters and numbers at the back to something easier to remember. I did that for my pricing guide when I was doing wedding stationery and needed a short, recallable URL for roadshows.
But no matter how functional it was, the bit.ly link remained unbranded and well… meh, as many other URL shorteners are. Since a lot of people were using it, it meant that I had to get creative with the short link as well, because someone would have taken the popular ones like bit.ly/welcome or bit.ly/pricing already.
But what if I told you it was possible to get a branded URL shortener, which uses your domain, for free?
Yep, it can look like this:
The free plan lets you have up to a generous 1,000 links, tracks stats, and is just pretty awesome all round.
Setting Up
In order to get your branded shortlinks working, you’ll need to have the following:
Access to your domain provider’s DNS settings.
A subdomain name that you haven’t used yet (I used ‘hello’, it was easiest to remember. Other examples are ‘links’, ‘l’, or ‘go’.)
That’s it!
Once you sign up, you’ll have to verify your domain. Then you’ll be asked to create a subdomain (in my case, hello.freshpages.co).
Next, to get this activated, you’ll have to add two A records. This is easily done by going to your domain provider, clicking on DNS settings, then following the respective instructions to adding records. There’s a step-by-step guide on short.io, so it makes it really easy.
Once that’s set up, you can go ahead and start adding shortlinks.
Using Shortlinks
I can see this working out really well for those of us who have long, unalterable links, especially Dubsado users.
if you’re using Dubsado, you can use this to create shortlinks for:
Your client dashboard,
Your schedulers, or
Public proposals or public lead forms.
Or anything else that needs shortening, really. Thanks to this discovery, my client dashboard is now at the neat and pretty http://hello.freshpages.co/dashboard instead of the previously undecipherable long URL.
(New to Dubsado? Grab a 20% off discount here.)
I’m also using it to shorten my Flodesk landing page URLs, so whenever I want to direct someone on social media to a lead magnet page, I can give them this branded shortlink.
This is now easily accessible via my branded URL shortlink. Click on the image to see it in action.
(You can also get a 50% discount off Flodesk here.)
Now, one thing to note is that your new branded shortlink will redirect back to the original long one after it’s been typed in. This doesn’t bother me, but for those of you who don’t want it to redirect, there’s a link cloaking feature on the paid plan, starting at US$20/month.
Other features of short.io
1. You can specify where the subdomain will redirect to if someone types it in without a shortlink URL slug. For me, I redirected it to my main website.
2. You can also specify where users will be redirected if the shortlink doesn’t exist. I’m planning to create a pretty 404-error page, but for now this also redirects back to my main website.
3. They also let you redirect based on the user’s device. For example, if you have an app that you want them to download on the Play Store, the branded shortlink can take users directly there.
Pretty cool, huh?
Now get creating!
Access short.io here.
Get your 20% discount for Dubsado here.
Get your 50% discount for Flodesk here.
the author
Hi, I’m Melody! I help creative entrepreneurs make money by streamlining their communications and building a brand that their clients like and trust.
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