What is a URL Shortener and How it works -Pixel URL tracking

November 18, 2019

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Sometimes we want to share a link in social media posts. The link may exceed character limit of the input box especially if you are planning to add your own captions to it. So, how do we overcome this limit? This is where URL shortener come into play. Now the common misconception is that the main purpose of link shortener are to shorten the links. This statement even though true is not the only thing a URL shortener, it’s applications in marketing field is limitless.

A URL shortener shortens the link and make it more professional. For example a search result URL will look like this https://www.google.com/search?q=apro+it+solutions&rlz=1C1CHBF_enIN859IN859&oq=apro+it+sol&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j35i39j69i60l3j69i65l2.2654j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

This doesn’t look nice and kind of drags. This link is especially not shareable if you are in a business. Instead by using link shortener (apropack.com) we can make it more pleasing to look at. This is how it is going to look after shortening it https://apropack.com/k0mwL. This has way less character count than the original one.

This is why many people use link shortener. Now coming into a business perceptive the use of a URL shortener is much more than just shortening. Businesses are a professional establishment. No one expects a long link from them. It should be professional and short.

Now before we move on with the topic let’s look at some of the cool things a link shortener can do:

Link Masking

This is what we discussed before – masking a long link behind a short link. The major disadvantage of using link shortener for customers is that spammers and hackers can hide malicious by using professional looking ones, but lucky for us most mainstream browsers have security protection against such links now. A properly masked link can be used to

Hide ugly links
Shortening long domains
For tracking.

The tracking part is one of the main reason business use link shortener. They can use it to get idea of how many visitors clicked on that specific link, giving them an idea of what interests’ people.

Link Tracking

Digital marketers, social media managers, need to provide a monthly report of their efforts. If they can’t prove they brought this much conversions or this much link clicks and so on then we have little to no job security. Our own link shortener site (apropack.com) provides tracking of clicks and much more for registered users.

Link Retargeting & Tracking Ad Delivery

Retargeting in its basic form is adding a pixel or a piece of code to our site that shows the users ads that you serve him. This works by using cookies. A cookie is implemented in your site, when a visitor visits your site, he will be given an anonymous cookie. When he leaves your site, the new site recognizes him and are served your ads.

Link Retargeting

It is the cheapest way to make profit from your visitors because the link shortening process is free and putting on a piece of code or pixel as it is more professionally known, on your site is barely time consuming. Another advantage is user doesn’t have to specifically visit your site to get hit by the ads. He just needs to press the link that you have shortened which can be done by sharing it on any social media.

Link Rotating

This is basically A/B test but instead of doing split tests, we separate the site traffic. That is, we direct some users to our landing page while the rest are redirected to some other task. For example, we are planning to run a contest and have the first 3 users be the winner while the rest gets a ‘better luck next time’ page.

Link Swapping

You can do link swapping with our site. That is, if you want to change the destination URL without changing the shortened link you can. But only if you are a registered user. This is useful when you are sending a new blog post link or something, you don’t have to keep on creating new shortened URLs. You can just swap out the old destination URL with the new one.

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