URL shoterner vs 301 Redirects. Good SEO?? Bad? Tips??
 

Hey everyone,

Recently, as of Jan 10th, I've taken a big hit to traffic from google as usual. I have no idea what happened, but I've been trying a few things to make up for the lost traffic. I went from 2.5K visitors per day down to 1.2 - 1.5K per day. It was a sudden drop off like a roller coaster just like last year. No penalties or anything, just a drop for no reason.

On twitter I am still getting decent traffic but it too has had changes lately. I've noticed my weekly impressions are down from around 600K to around 100K on a good day. Not sure if it was a change that resulted in this or if it is related to a more accurate impressions and previously it was off, anyways, I'm still getting lots of impressions on twitter.

I thought it would be a good idea to try sending people from twitter directly to the programs I am promoting rather than to my website which then go to the programs.

At first I tried using a free URL shortener until I realized it had a limit on clicks per day on each link so I thought I would set up my own.

I couldn't figure out how to though, lol. YOURLS was recommended but it's a bit advanced for me so I got a different idea, why don't I just set up 301 redirects off of custom made URLs on my domain. These URLS don't actually exist, but when I use them the 301 redirect works perfectly as I hoped.

Is this good for SEO, bad, or irrelevant? I've noticed that since I started doing this, I am sending more traffic than normal to the websites I promote, however, my website traffic is down slightly even more, today especially it dropped a couple hundred. I have been pretty lazy the last 2 days so maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe not.

Anyone have any idea about this? I was thinking about how a URL shortener website works and it makes sense that it just sets up 301 redirects but I can't confirm. Also, using this from my main website / domain, will that hurt the SEO?

Any tips would be wonderful, thanks!

If you do use a URL shortner, never use BITLY!

They will bring your conversion rate all the way down.

You can download an open source URL shortner and put it on your server.

Is clear for you right now?

Thanks I tried that but I couldn't figure it out. I did set up my own custom 301's off of custom made urls that don't actually exist, yet work perferctly. Is this the same as running a URL shortener?

I use htaccess file with:

As said previously don't use Bit.ly which has a terrible CTR. Go for a home made.
Good luck in your journey!

You can contact Yourls support team and they will install it for you. I don't know if they charge or not. But, it's listed on there website.