How to Shorten a Link
What is link shortening?:

As the name suggests, a URL shortened will make those long, not so pretty, looking links shorter and therefore more sharable. While there are many reasons you may want to share something online, for the purpose of this article, we will focus on how you do use this to build your business by promoting products and services you love.

Sharing links in an easy and aesthetic way is very important to your web appearance. No one likes those long and unattractive URL links. Long cumbersome links take up too much space and they can distract and detract readers from receiving the meaning of your message.

Aside from the visual aspect, it is vitally important to track the links you use for your business. Whether you are using link shortening for advertising a product or service of your own or of another company that you recommend, you need to know what is working and what is not working. Some link shortening services and features that provide all the tracking information you'll need. These features may include things like clicks, conversions, sales, real-time clicks and where on the globe the viewer was when they clicked the link. Having this data is invaluable for knowing where to spend your time and energy when it comes to sharing more links in the future.

There are many completely free sites that offer this service, a few of them you may have heard of. There are others that provide both free and paid plans and cover a variety more robust features mentioned above that are helpful to business owners wanting to share information this way. There are two different types of formats you may come across while you are searching, such as web-based platforms and WordPress plugins.

How to use link shortening:

You can share images, affiliate links, links to articles, blog posts, websites, social network pages and profiles. Anytime you don't want or need the URL to stand out you can use a link shortened.

You can share links on your social media profiles, your website, within your blog posts, in your email messages. Basically. if you can share a link, you can share a shortened link.

You may not want to use a link shortening service if you are promoting the home page of your website and you are trying to get visibility of yourname.com. However, if you are sharing a blog post that is several pages deep on your site, or an affiliate link to product or service, you may want to cloak the link.