Vanity URL is a shorter version of a URL that contains meaningful words explaining the content of that page. This URL will redirect the user to the URL you want the user to visit. It is different from short URLs because majority of short URLs read like this – http://bit.ly/37HiygE. While the URL has become shorter but looking at this URL doesn’t give you any information about what’s inside it. Vanity URL is similar to them but meaningful. Consider this URL – bit.ly/techcrook-homepage, while looking at it you can understand that it will redirect you to Techcrook’s homepage.
URL is Uniform Resource Locator that is the address of the page. Like the current address of this page is https://techcrook.com/windows-tricks/what-is-vanity-url-how-to-create-a-vanity-url/.
Vanity URL is required for visual representation as a majority of links are very long. To make these links shorter and readable there are several tools available online like bitly and TinyURL.
Why Vanity URL?
As Vanity URLs are meaningful and give you an extract of what’s inside, it increases the CTR. As Vanity urls have customized content it can be made easily rememberable for the user. You can easily remember this url bit.ly/techcrook-homepage than http://bit.ly/37HiygE. That’s the biggest advantage of using Vanity URL than a normal shorten URL.
Bitly – With bitly you can simply shorten your URL from very long to less than 50 characters. This also provides some free analytical tools to track these links. You can also create and run campaigns. You can visit their pricing structures for all the features they have.
TinyURL – TinyURL is the oldest and most relevant free Vanity URL creator. It can short the link and give you whatever you want to write in your link. But is not suitable for campaigns as it doesn’t provide any tracking or analytics. Though you can create a free custom URL like https://tinyurl.com/techcrook-homepage
