In short, Google treats shortlinks as being a link for the sake of pagerank – to the destination.

I agree, it’s both shorter and less confusing to use a non “www” address. It’s just a matter of choosing to use it and including the proper code in the site htaccess file to ensure everything points to the right place. It always amazes me how many sites don’t make a conscience decision about which one to use, and then one or the other leads to an error page or doesn’t connect at all.

Stuffing a domain with keywords does make it longer and can look spammy but exact domain matches do have there good points. Here are a few articles on the subject. Take a read and decide for yourself.

“Branded vs Keyword-Rich Domain Names”
http://bit.ly/fBs582

“Should You Buy An Exact Match Domain Name?”
http://bit.ly/ejP1E7

“Why exact domain matches rank so well”
http://selnd.com/e83D2I

As Ruud mentioned above, there are scripts available (like lessn) to create your own URL shortener, but you can always use your own domain through bit.ly with less setup and get analytics too. But whether you roll your own of use a custom domain name through a service, both will help with increasing brand awareness. For example, the short URL for the last article listed above is for Search Engine Land.

I don’t see a downside in using a URL shortener through another service in creating links, even if it goes through their site first. A shortened URL main purposes if to reduce number of characters used in social media sharing. And, if you look at this article “How Is Twitter Impacting Search and SEO?” http://bit.ly/f9qbYr you’ll see that regardless of who the link is through, Google is taking note.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Hi Annemarie – thank you for your kind comment.

Although I knew about auto linking, it didn’t really hit me until I saw the adverse effect it can have. When I tweeted an article from SEOBook.com, I noticed the domain in the page title was written as two words “SEO Book.com”, and the Book.com was auto linking to Barnes and Noble. Probably not what the author intended.

I’m looking forward to reading your blog.

What I love from bit.ly, too, is that you can use your own domain name for it. I bought ruudhe.in for example. True, there are scripts out there that let you do the same thing but this is a no-hassle, free solution.

Thanks for dropping by Annemarie. Nice blog you have going yourself; loved the time management posts.

As you have mentioned, branding is vital and following your great instructions will allow us to share great content while also building brand awareness.

Great stuff!