Redirects

5 Ways to Enhance Marketing Campaigns with Vanity URLs

October 23, 2024
5 min read

5 Ways to Enhance Marketing Campaigns with Vanity URLs

Did you know companies have merely 10 seconds to capture customers’ attention? This narrow timeframe means every detail of a digital marketing campaign counts—including the format of your URL. Companies incorporating vanity URLs stand out from the sea of generic URLs to gain a valuable competitive edge. These shortened, customized links are easy to make and even easier for customers to remember. They offer a range of benefits, from increased brand recognition to higher click rates to a cohesive and streamlined user experience.

If you’re considering using vanity URLs, here’s the scoop on what they are, how they work, and five key ways they benefit marketing campaigns.

What is a vanity URL?

A vanity URL is a shortened, customized, and easily shared link that leads to a relevant web page. It works the same way as a full-length URL but eliminates the hassle of inputting a long string of characters. Vanity URLs usually contain keywords connected to a company’s brand, motto, or ongoing campaign. For instance, a retailer running a skirt sale might use a vanity URL that looks like skirts.ly/sale

It’s worth noting that not every customized link or short link is a vanity URL. Here are some basic definitions to help you navigate this territory: 

  • Short link: A URL shrunk to a bite-sized portion that leads to a web address associated with a full URL. Short links are popular for sharing information on social media or through SMS. They’re not customized and might look something like this: rf.ly/edfGp.
  • Vanity URL: A customized short link that contains keywords related to a brand’s offering. It usually leads to special content such as a limited-time offer or a branded social media page. A coffee supplier might use a vanity URL similar to this: beans.ly/wholesale
  • Vanity domain: A short, customized link that acts as a company’s main web address: for example, Virgin Airlines uses virg.in. Vanity domains are often used to increase brand recognition and unity. (Note: You need a vanity domain to have a vanity URL.)

Vanity URLs are rapidly becoming a standard practice in digital marketing campaigns. Here are five ways they help companies stand out.

Searching a URL on the computer

Raise brand recognition

Because vanity URLs are customized, they offer a great opportunity for companies to heighten brand recognition. Vanity URLs transform the moment a customer clicks on a link from wholly forgettable to the forging of a deeper connection. Here are the benefits of that interaction:

  • Your brand loyalty increases: Studies show that repeatedly exposing people to a brand increases brand loyalty because it makes the brand feel like part of everyday life. If a customer uses a vanity URL, it’s another point of engagement that contributes to solidifying your bond in the long term. 
  • Your brand is easier to recall: Customers are unlikely to remember the seemingly random string of characters associated with other URL versions. Vanity URLs make it easy for customers to remember your brand—which also means they’re more likely to find your company or refer it to others. 
  • Your authority goes up: Putting forth that extra effort to design a vanity URL is like adding your signature to an important document or piece of art. It verifies that you’re a company that cares about its reputation and presentation, which causes customers to view you as authorities and thought leaders in your field.

By enhancing brand recognition, vanity URLs can bring your marketing campaign closer to success by making it stand out from competitors and deepening the customer-client relationship.

Track user metrics

From a marketing perspective, one of the biggest advantages of vanity URLs is they allow companies to track user metrics. Every time a user clicks, companies gain valuable insights into audience behavior. This business intelligence can help companies improve future campaigns or tweak ongoing ones. (Note: URL redirect services like SiteDetour enable this possibility by helping users design dynamic vanity URLs they can track in real time.)

SiteDetour grants users insight into diverse user metrics such as traffic, location, device used, and the referring domain. It also allows users to personalize campaigns. Users can create multiple vanity URLs and A/B test them to see which performs better over time.

Streamline user experience

Vanity URLs don’t just look nice—they make it considerably easier for users to navigate the digital landscape. Here’s how that works:

  • They contain a clear call to action: Vanity URLs can be customized according to the action marketers want a customer to take. For instance, a bookstore running a shopping campaign might send a vanity URL like bookstore.co/shopnow. The link uses keywords that let customers know what to expect when they click.
  • They create a cohesive user experience: vanity URLs are much more eye-catching than long, clunky URLs, meaning they’re easy to share across various platforms. Users can be guided from scanning a QR code to a company’s web page, or from a social media site to a web page, without losing contact with a brand’s identity. They’re also much easier to transition from offline to online experiences (and vice versa).
  •  They’re easily shareable: Many digital forms have character limits. Vanity URLs allow users to share information in a text message or on a social media platform without hampering the user’s experience. 

Vanity URLs can act like guideposts in your campaign, nudging users in the right direction while setting clear expectations. They also save customers valuable time, further improving your relationship with them.

Increase trust, credibility, and click rates

Vanity URLs enhance your brand’s credibility and increase user trust. This is a notable advantage compared to short links, which are often used in phishing scams. By embedding your brand name in the link, you verify its validity, which can lead to higher click rates. Indeed, studies show that vanity URLs have a 39% higher click rate than short links or generic URLs.

Promote SEO   

Because vanity URLs can embed keywords directly into a web address, they’re easily identifiable by search engines like Google. That means when people conduct a search relevant to your brand or offering, the chances are higher your company will appear in their search results. This can lead to an increase in the organic traffic to your website and boost your website’s SEO ranking.

SiteDetour’s URL redirection service was built specifically for vanity URL use cases. Users can onboard their vanity domains to SiteDetour and have them redirected anywhere. For instance, a company with the vanity URL ex.com can use SiteDetour to redirect website traffic to example.com. Any pages related to that vanity domain can also be redirected. (e.g., ex.com/mkt will redirect to example.com/marketplace.) This simple change can help organizations streamline their brand, enhance the user experience, and improve business outcomes. 

To learn more about SiteDetour and how it can boost your online presence, get started today with a demo or a free trial.

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Redirects

5 Ways to Enhance Marketing Campaigns with Vanity URLs

April 3, 2023
5 min read
Marketing Campaign Image

A redirect is a tool used by websites for “rerouting” or sending a visitor to an alternative webpage. An example of a redirect would be when you type “example.com” in your web-browser, but are taken to a different website, like “new-example.com.”

URL redirects are an extremely common practice employed by webmasters and content managers to ensure visitors to their website are reaching their desired content.

When would I use a redirect?

  1. A page has been relocated within your site
    Let’s say your website has a page by the path “/t-shirts” – The “t-shirts” page has been a part of your website sitemap for years, and is one of your most frequently visited pages. Suddenly, you need to build out a more general page on your site that has t-shirts, and dress shirts. Your goal is to have the new page be accessible by a shorter, more general path, like “/shirts”. In this situation, you would want to use a URL redirect to ensure that traffic for the page “/t-shirts” is successfully rerouted to the new “/shirts” page of your website. Without a redirect in place, you could run the risk of visitors still accessing the old /t-shirts page, even though you want to drive all traffic to the new /shirts page. Due to the nature of SEO, it’s possible that there are many links throughout the Internet that still point visitors to the old URL, and it is the job of the URL redirect to ensure visitors still make it to the appropriate page.
  2. Your domain name is changing!
    Changing a website’s domain name is a drastic decision which must be handled with the utmost care. Let’s say your website has always been www.abc-brand.com. Due to a rebranding effort, you are changing your brand from “ABC” to “XYZ”, and thus your website’s URL will need to be adjusted to reflect the change. In this scenario, it would be critical that you 301 redirect all traffic requesting “abc-brand.com” to the new and improved “xyz-brand.com”. Furthermore, you would want to ensure that all pages within the abc-brand website are also redirected, like abc-brand.com/my-page being redirected to xyx-brand.com/my-page
  3. You have alternative domains that you wish to serve as “shortcuts” into your website
    It is a common practice for businesses to buy dozens of domain names that:
  • Are spelled similarly to their business name – consider “gogle.com” that redirects to google.com
  • Are variations of their name that visitors may otherwise know them as – consider “joes-tees.com” that redirects to the main business website, “joes-shirts.com”
  • Are shortened, easily typed versions of the primary domain name – consider “shirtsale2019.com” redirecting to “joes-shirts.com”. It is common to find this shorter, more memorable URL variation on physical advertisements because people are more likely to remember them. As such, a URL redirect would be used to reroute the alternative domain name to your primary domain name of your website.

How does a redirect actually work?

When you request a web-page from your browser, there is a server somewhere on the Internet that is receiving your request and responding with the appropriate content. Fundamentally, a redirect occurs when a web-server's response contains a special piece of data (an HTTP response header) instructing the browser to reroute the visitor to an alternative location.

The technical details aside, a browser works by requesting a URL and rendering the page that is returned by the website. If the website wishes the user to be redirected, the server will respond differently than if it was serving a page; it will send an extra piece of data indicating that the visitor should be redirected to a specified location.

Without going into too much of the technical details – a redirect is a behavior performed by a web-browser whenever it receives a response containing a flag (an HTTP header) to do so.

What are the types of redirects available?

301 Redirect

Commonly referred to as a “permanent” redirect.

Indicates to search-engines and web-browsers that the requested page has permanently relocated to a new location.

Note: permanent redirects are often cached by web-browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Therefore, it may be tricky to retroactively update a 301 redirects target location once it has been established. Any visitors who have already received the 301 redirect response for a URL will likely be served a cached response from their web-browser when visiting the same URL again.

Suggestion Only use a 301 redirect when you know that the target location will not change.

Common Uses

  • A 301 redirect is appropriate when a website is changing it’s domain name. In this scenario, the site should be 301 redirecting all traffic for it’s old domain name to the new website URL.
  • Another common use-case for a 301 redirect is for pages within your website that have been permanently moved to a new URL

302 Redirect

Commonly referred to as a “temporary” redirect.

Useful for general-purpose redirects within your website, where you do not want visitor’s to cache the redirect response permanently.

Suggestion Use 302 redirects for pages that have changed URL, but are subject to be updated in the future

Common Uses

  • A page is temporarily being moved to a new URL
  • Conditions where the destination location of the redirect is subject to change
  • Navigating the user away from a page during an error

307 Redirect

Uncommon due to legacy browser support

Used for technical scenarios when a visitor’s HTTP request method should be persisted when they are redirected. For example, if a user submits a form, the browser normally issues a POST request to the form’s action URL. If the server responds with a 302 redirect response, the client’s web-browser would typically issue a GET request when handling the redirect. However, if the server responds with a 307 redirect response, the client’s web-browser will POST request to the redirect destination. Please note, form-data is typically lost when redirecting via POST request.

When do I need a redirect?

The most common use-cases that would require a redirect are:

  1. Changing your domain name
  2. Restructuring website pathing, resulting in URL changes for content within your website
  3. URL shortening – having a shorter, more memorable alternative to your primary domain name.
  4. Sending traffic from additional/alternative domain names (Example: gogle.com redirects to google.com)
  5. Sending traffic from your DNS zone apex / naked domain name to your “www” sub-domain (Example: domain.com 301 redirects to www.domain.com)

Important considerations when redirecting a URL

  1. Ensure your URL supports HTTPS connections! Otherwise you may have visitors who are receiving broken links.
  2. When redirecting a specific path within your website, you may want to match paths based on a pattern or Regular Expression, as opposed to a single path.
  3. Seriously consider whether you should use a 301 or a 302, based on the information above.

5 Ways to Enhance Marketing Campaigns with Vanity URLs

Did you know companies have merely 10 seconds to capture customers’ attention? This narrow timeframe means every detail of a digital marketing campaign counts—including the format of your URL. Companies incorporating vanity URLs stand out from the sea of generic URLs to gain a valuable competitive edge. These shortened, customized links are easy to make and even easier for customers to remember. They offer a range of benefits, from increased brand recognition to higher click rates to a cohesive and streamlined user experience.

If you’re considering using vanity URLs, here’s the scoop on what they are, how they work, and five key ways they benefit marketing campaigns.

What is a vanity URL?

A vanity URL is a shortened, customized, and easily shared link that leads to a relevant web page. It works the same way as a full-length URL but eliminates the hassle of inputting a long string of characters. Vanity URLs usually contain keywords connected to a company’s brand, motto, or ongoing campaign. For instance, a retailer running a skirt sale might use a vanity URL that looks like skirts.ly/sale

It’s worth noting that not every customized link or short link is a vanity URL. Here are some basic definitions to help you navigate this territory: 

  • Short link: A URL shrunk to a bite-sized portion that leads to a web address associated with a full URL. Short links are popular for sharing information on social media or through SMS. They’re not customized and might look something like this: rf.ly/edfGp.
  • Vanity URL: A customized short link that contains keywords related to a brand’s offering. It usually leads to special content such as a limited-time offer or a branded social media page. A coffee supplier might use a vanity URL similar to this: beans.ly/wholesale
  • Vanity domain: A short, customized link that acts as a company’s main web address: for example, Virgin Airlines uses virg.in. Vanity domains are often used to increase brand recognition and unity. (Note: You need a vanity domain to have a vanity URL.)

Vanity URLs are rapidly becoming a standard practice in digital marketing campaigns. Here are five ways they help companies stand out.

Searching a URL on the computer

Raise brand recognition

Because vanity URLs are customized, they offer a great opportunity for companies to heighten brand recognition. Vanity URLs transform the moment a customer clicks on a link from wholly forgettable to the forging of a deeper connection. Here are the benefits of that interaction:

  • Your brand loyalty increases: Studies show that repeatedly exposing people to a brand increases brand loyalty because it makes the brand feel like part of everyday life. If a customer uses a vanity URL, it’s another point of engagement that contributes to solidifying your bond in the long term. 
  • Your brand is easier to recall: Customers are unlikely to remember the seemingly random string of characters associated with other URL versions. Vanity URLs make it easy for customers to remember your brand—which also means they’re more likely to find your company or refer it to others. 
  • Your authority goes up: Putting forth that extra effort to design a vanity URL is like adding your signature to an important document or piece of art. It verifies that you’re a company that cares about its reputation and presentation, which causes customers to view you as authorities and thought leaders in your field.

By enhancing brand recognition, vanity URLs can bring your marketing campaign closer to success by making it stand out from competitors and deepening the customer-client relationship.

Track user metrics

From a marketing perspective, one of the biggest advantages of vanity URLs is they allow companies to track user metrics. Every time a user clicks, companies gain valuable insights into audience behavior. This business intelligence can help companies improve future campaigns or tweak ongoing ones. (Note: URL redirect services like SiteDetour enable this possibility by helping users design dynamic vanity URLs they can track in real time.)

SiteDetour grants users insight into diverse user metrics such as traffic, location, device used, and the referring domain. It also allows users to personalize campaigns. Users can create multiple vanity URLs and A/B test them to see which performs better over time.

Streamline user experience

Vanity URLs don’t just look nice—they make it considerably easier for users to navigate the digital landscape. Here’s how that works:

  • They contain a clear call to action: Vanity URLs can be customized according to the action marketers want a customer to take. For instance, a bookstore running a shopping campaign might send a vanity URL like bookstore.co/shopnow. The link uses keywords that let customers know what to expect when they click.
  • They create a cohesive user experience: vanity URLs are much more eye-catching than long, clunky URLs, meaning they’re easy to share across various platforms. Users can be guided from scanning a QR code to a company’s web page, or from a social media site to a web page, without losing contact with a brand’s identity. They’re also much easier to transition from offline to online experiences (and vice versa).
  •  They’re easily shareable: Many digital forms have character limits. Vanity URLs allow users to share information in a text message or on a social media platform without hampering the user’s experience. 

Vanity URLs can act like guideposts in your campaign, nudging users in the right direction while setting clear expectations. They also save customers valuable time, further improving your relationship with them.

Increase trust, credibility, and click rates

Vanity URLs enhance your brand’s credibility and increase user trust. This is a notable advantage compared to short links, which are often used in phishing scams. By embedding your brand name in the link, you verify its validity, which can lead to higher click rates. Indeed, studies show that vanity URLs have a 39% higher click rate than short links or generic URLs.

Promote SEO   

Because vanity URLs can embed keywords directly into a web address, they’re easily identifiable by search engines like Google. That means when people conduct a search relevant to your brand or offering, the chances are higher your company will appear in their search results. This can lead to an increase in the organic traffic to your website and boost your website’s SEO ranking.

SiteDetour’s URL redirection service was built specifically for vanity URL use cases. Users can onboard their vanity domains to SiteDetour and have them redirected anywhere. For instance, a company with the vanity URL ex.com can use SiteDetour to redirect website traffic to example.com. Any pages related to that vanity domain can also be redirected. (e.g., ex.com/mkt will redirect to example.com/marketplace.) This simple change can help organizations streamline their brand, enhance the user experience, and improve business outcomes. 

To learn more about SiteDetour and how it can boost your online presence, get started today with a demo or a free trial.