We (SEO’s) all need to do link building and we’re always looking for great domains to get links from. If we can control that great domain that’s even better because then you can put whatever links we want on it.
Obviously the issue with that is there is huge amount of time and effort associated with creating a great domain because that itself involving getting links from other places. This brings me neatly to today’s thought – if we can create a service domain that sits in the middle between two websites then we can house a lot of link equity in that middle site – and then we’re in SEO heaven. But what type of site offers a middle man service that is actually useful – URL shorteners!
See where I’m going yet?
URL shorteners are great because they make links easier to remember. And links that are easier to remember are easier to put in your posts and tweets.
From a link equity perspective URL shorteners are an interesting bred. A URL shortener sits in the middle between website A and website B. Website A is actually passing domain authority to the shortener domain (bit.ly, owl.ly, etc). The way that the destination site gets that equity back is through the shortener using a 301 redirect.
…So what’s the link building idea?
Someone (not me) should create a URL shortening service which 302 redirects all link through to the destination. Those 302 redirects would appear correct to the user but to the search engine the redirect would be temporary and therefore the link equity wouldn’t be passed it would remain within the domain of the shortener service (that you control). Then all you have to do is specify the links that you want to SEO and use 301 instead (the link passing type of redirect). You get the equity through that individual link but transfer of a percentage of domain authority that has built in the site through all those 302 redirects.
What do you think – good idea, or bad?
