The Twitter craze has taken the world by storm, with everyone from Presidents of countries to mobile restaurants (Kogi) participating in the Tweeting madness. It’s an interesting phenomenon and one that has been studied by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals across the world (such as yours truly).

That fact that only 140 characters can be posted in a Twitter post (Tweet) has raised some problems for websites that utilize URLs on the long side. If linking to a website, and the URL takes up 100 of the 140 characters allowed in a Tweet, the amount of room for text is significantly decreased. On the flip side, if a URL has only 10 characters, there are 130 characters left for Tweety goodness.

Now, this is where the problem arises.

URL shortening services have recently been popping up left and right, which are geared towards minimizing URL length. Yes, this can be good, but it can also be very bad. When focusing on SEO, the URL itself is extremely important. The text in the URL and the backlinks built to that particular URL are directly related to its ranking in search engines. If backlinks are being built to a shortened URL and not the real URL, the impact of your Twitter efforts is significantly diminished.

This is definitely something to keep in mind. I hope the info helps.

Sincerely,
Aaron Schoenberger
The Brainchild Group