URL shorteners create URLs that are easy to share. They also let small companies track their the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns as well as other traffic. Here are the top four URL shorteners that will aid you in managing your company's online presence.

How many people visited your website last month? How many of them came from a link in your latest newsletter? How many clicked a link you placed on social media? If you run a small business website , it's in your interest to track the sources of your web traffic to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. It can also give you insight about your potential customers or clients. Small businesses don't always have a marketing expert on staff who knows how to track traffic in this way. You can do it yourself, no matter your technical skill level, and one of the easiest ways is by using a free link shortener and link tracking service.

What Are URL Shorteners?

URL shorteners are apps, typically web apps, that take a long URL and shrink it down to fewer characters. An example is TinyURL(Opens in a new window) . If you copy and paste a long link into the main field on TinyURL, the web page spits out a much shorter link that goes to the same page. Shortened links display better in emails, print material, and other places.

Some URL shortener services turn long links into small ones, and that's it. The more capable ones double as link-tracking services. In other words, the app shows you the traffic coming from each link.

This capability is useful because you can then make specific links for specific purposes. Let's say you want people to go to the page MyCompany.com/business-partnerships/new-opportunities. That's a long URL, so you generate two short versions, A and B. You use link A exclusively in cold emails reaching out to new potential partners. Link B goes exclusively into emails with existing partners. That way, you can differentiate the email link traffic coming from new versus existing partners.

Branding Your Links

Some URL shorteners provide even more value, however, by letting you buy a domain that you can use to brand the link to add more brand awareness. For example, when The New York Times makes a short link, it starts with nyti.ms/. Nike, whose logo is a swoosh, starts many of its short links with swoo.sh/.

You have to buy the domain to get that level of customization. Many URL shortener services offer that sale as part of their service.

Getting Started With URL Shorteners

If you start using a URL shortener, you'll learn the ropes as you set up the tool and start making new links. It's all pretty easy. If you are curious to learn more, I would point you to a few keywords that will help you find the right information.

One is UTM. UTM stands for urchin tracking module, but I promise you, that's not important to know at all, if your goal is to make links that help you better track your traffic. If you really want to dive into the details of URL customization, however, go read more about UTM links, UTM codes, or UTM builders.

4 Top URL Shorteners and Link-Tracking Services

There are a lot of services out there that can help you shorten your URLs, rebrand them, and track incoming traffic from them. The four mentioned here are merely the best among the ones I've seen and tried, and I've listed them alphabetically.

Bitly

Bitly(Opens in a new window) is a full-service online link management tool. It generates unique links for you to use in marketing, social media, business cards, promotional materials, and other places. Bitly simplifies some of the technical aspects of making unique links while also keeping them short. Shorter links are easier to share, especially on print materials. (It used to be a problem on Twitter, too, but now even Twitter shortens all URLs to 23 characters(Opens in a new window) .) You can get shortened links that are branded for your organization, too, rather than have them be a random set of letters and numbers. This service also gives you a dashboard where you can track the traffic to your site and see exactly how people ended up on your page.

Bitly has a free tier of service that has limitations. Paid plans start at $35 per month.

Bl.ink

Bl.ink(Opens in a new window) is another full-service online link management tool and URL shortener. It's very similar to Bitly, although it offers more paid plan types at different price points, making it perhaps more accessible to small businesses on a budget. You can use it to create branded links and shortened links. Bl.ink lets you fine-tune the words used in the links, too, if you want to keep them readable. When it comes to managing marketing campaigns and tracking links, you get real-time analytics, searchable tags, and the ability to add notes for yourself or your teammates.

There's a free Bl.ink account with limitations, as well as paid accounts starting at $12 per month.

Rebrandly

Rebrandly(Opens in a new window) positions itself more for professionals in marketing and businesses that create hundreds or thousands of unique URLs, rather than small business owners. Otherwise, it's similar to Bitly and Bl.ink in that you can use it to generate unique URLs and track all the traffic coming from them. It offers custom branded links, too, plus tags, a dashboard, and more. Even the free tier of service comes with the ability to make up to five custom domain names to use in your URLs.

Rebrandly has a free plan, plus paid options starting at $29 per month.

Yourls

Unlike all the other link shortening and tracking services I've mentioned so far, Yourls(Opens in a new window) is not highly intuitive, nor appropriate for less technical people. I include it because it's a very good free and open-source option. Plus, how cute is that name? It stands for "your own URL shortener," but it works even without explanation. It lets you generate unique URLs, which can be public or private. It also offers some amount of link tracking. You need a little bit of technical know-how to install it, and although it's lightweight out of the box, you can also customize it by adding plug-ins or building your own.