ClickandRent is fast becoming the number one choice for both renters and owners of rental accommodation in Europe. We already have over 70,000 hand picked properties and a fast growing client base who find our system easy, profitable and reliable. Our private owners and renters are enjoying the benefits of our smooth, professional service at affordable rates for all concerned.
With over 20 years experience in the rental market throughout Spain and all over Europe, our dedicated team works round the clock so that you can rest assured you get the best deal possible. Our powerful IT professionals are always there behind the scenes, backing up our front line staff. State of the art technology, combined with a helpful, friendly service guarantees the best results for you.
Our user friendly on-line systems and dedication to personal assistance on request sets us apart from the rest. Our attention to detail is renowned, making us a firm favourite for both home owners and renters alike.
Holiday Locations in Spain
Andorra, AragAn, Aragan, Aragn, Barcelona, Basque, Basque, Cantabria, Castile-la-mancha, Castile la mancha, Castilla y lean, Castilla y leAn, Castilla y len, Community of madrid, Ccommunity of madrid, Costa-blanca, Costa de almeria, Costa de la luz, Costa del azahar, Costa-del-garraf, costa-del-sol, Costa-dorada, Costa brava, Costa calida, Costa clida, Costa de almeria, Costa de la luz, Costa dorada, Costa tropical,El maresme, Extremadura, Galicia, Ibiza, Inland andalucia, Inland catalonia, Inland andalucia, Inland catalonia, Mallorca, Murcia, Principado-de-asturias, United Kingdom,
Whether you own a castle in Scotland, want to escape to a remote French farmhouse, or are searching for a city break in Munich, we have the technology and know-how to get you the best results.
For ClickandRent, Europe is our oyster and we welcome you to click into our world where your dreams become reality. Thanks to our understanding of the market, years of dedicated research, sound expertise and down to earth hands-on approach, we can offer you the solution you've been looking for.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
How to get traffic from Twitter
Twitter is one of the latest and greatest Web 2.0 apps and it gets tons of traffic. However, from the point of view of a SEO expert, it is more important that Twitter can get you tons of traffic as well. So, if you still don't have an account with Twitter, you'd better open one.
Twitter is simple to use and this is what made it so popular. Twitter is fashionable right now, so enjoy the moment. Even the creators of Twitter admit that as with MySpace and other Web 2.0 sensations, Twitter will inevitably go out of fashion some day, so hurry up and get some traffic for free now, when it is still all the rage of the season.
Twitter is simple to use, yet it is really powerful. You might need a couple of hours to get familiar with the basic functionality of Twitter and of some of the extras it has but you can harness its power, even if you don't know it very well.
Unlike most of the other places you can get traffic for free, Twitter is a microblogging platform, which means that there are restrictions on the number of characters in a message. Therefore, you need to be concise in your Tweets and use your space wisely. In addition to being concise, here are some more tips to help you get traffic from Twitter:
1Make your Twitter profile interesting
Your profile and your username are the first two things your visitors will see when they go to your Twitter page. If your profile looks boring, people won't bother to read your tweets, not to mention visit the links you post in them. You can't write a very long bio of yours, but you can enter a few words about you – i.e. your occupation, your interests, etc. You can also include a couple of keywords in your bio.
2 Pick a niche-targeted username
Your username is also very important. You need to pick a username that is targeted at your niche. For instance, if you are promoting your SEO services and want to drive traffic to your SEO site, you can choose something like SEOmaster, SEOguru, SEOservices, etc. Your username will show in searches other users make and this is why you must pay attention to what you choose.
3 Put your site/blog URL in your profile
According to some statistics, 80% of tweeters don't provide an URL in their bio! Well, maybe these people are not SEO experts/Internet marketers and they don't need this traffic but you as a SEO expert can't afford to miss it. So, don't forget to include your URL in your profile!
4 Send the link to your profile to your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances
Your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances will be your most loyal audience, so if they don't know about your Twitter page, make them aware of what they are missing. If you have their emails, or know their accounts on other networks, you can send a mass invite.
5Search for Twitter users with similar interests
You might have millions of friends, but more followers are always welcome. That is why you can use the search functions on Twitter and find people with similar interests. Find as many as you can and invite them all. These people might not be as loyal as your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances but still you will get hits from them as well. Some Twitter users report that about 1-2% of their followers visit their site a day, which means that if you have 1,000 followers, you might expect to get at least 10 or 20 visits a day to your site. This response rate might seem low but there are ways to increase it.
6 Socialize on Twitter as much as you can
When you are active in Twitter, respond to the posts of your followers and visit their links, this seriously increases your chances that you will get the same in return. In a word, actively follow those that follow you.
7 Tweet regularly
As with all other kinds of media, if you want to keep your audience, you need to feed it regularly. Writing a short tweet takes just seconds, but it is enough in order to keep your followers happy. It goes without saying, that you should tweet about useful things, so if you don't have something meaningful to post about you or your sites, it is quite OK to post a link to an article, a video, a blog, etc. you found on the Net and you like.
7Don't spam
You might feel that every single user on Twitter is interested in you and your blog/site but this is not exactly so. You might be tempted to make as many users as you can aware of your Twitter page and your latest tweets but you'd better refrain from doing this, unless you want to see if you can get a ban or not.
8Take advantage of Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is one more useful service you can take advantage of in order to increase your reach. Go to twitterfeed.com and configure your feeds.
9Make Twitter Search love you
Twitter has a great search function and its main advantage is that it offers real-time results. Google might be fast in indexing pages but its indexing is not real-time. Users are hungry for hot news and nothing beats a real-time search. Many bloggers report that they are getting more traffic from Twitter than from Google and partially this is due to the fact that their tweets are popular and users find them with ease.
10Add Twitter gadgets to your site
There are tons of Twitter gadgets and new ones are being released every day. The cool thing about Twitter gadgets is that your blog visitors can become your Twitter followers. If your Twitter followers have many followers, chances are that some of these followers will notice you and will join your network. As we already mentioned, building a large and targeted network is key to getting more Twitter traffic to your site.
These are some of the main ways in which you can get traffic from Twitter. If you are creative and if you monitor what's going on on Twitter and what new Twitter gadgets are released, you will certainly find more ways to drive traffic from Twitter to your site.
Twitter is simple to use and this is what made it so popular. Twitter is fashionable right now, so enjoy the moment. Even the creators of Twitter admit that as with MySpace and other Web 2.0 sensations, Twitter will inevitably go out of fashion some day, so hurry up and get some traffic for free now, when it is still all the rage of the season.
Twitter is simple to use, yet it is really powerful. You might need a couple of hours to get familiar with the basic functionality of Twitter and of some of the extras it has but you can harness its power, even if you don't know it very well.
Unlike most of the other places you can get traffic for free, Twitter is a microblogging platform, which means that there are restrictions on the number of characters in a message. Therefore, you need to be concise in your Tweets and use your space wisely. In addition to being concise, here are some more tips to help you get traffic from Twitter:
1Make your Twitter profile interesting
Your profile and your username are the first two things your visitors will see when they go to your Twitter page. If your profile looks boring, people won't bother to read your tweets, not to mention visit the links you post in them. You can't write a very long bio of yours, but you can enter a few words about you – i.e. your occupation, your interests, etc. You can also include a couple of keywords in your bio.
2 Pick a niche-targeted username
Your username is also very important. You need to pick a username that is targeted at your niche. For instance, if you are promoting your SEO services and want to drive traffic to your SEO site, you can choose something like SEOmaster, SEOguru, SEOservices, etc. Your username will show in searches other users make and this is why you must pay attention to what you choose.
3 Put your site/blog URL in your profile
According to some statistics, 80% of tweeters don't provide an URL in their bio! Well, maybe these people are not SEO experts/Internet marketers and they don't need this traffic but you as a SEO expert can't afford to miss it. So, don't forget to include your URL in your profile!
4 Send the link to your profile to your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances
Your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances will be your most loyal audience, so if they don't know about your Twitter page, make them aware of what they are missing. If you have their emails, or know their accounts on other networks, you can send a mass invite.
5Search for Twitter users with similar interests
You might have millions of friends, but more followers are always welcome. That is why you can use the search functions on Twitter and find people with similar interests. Find as many as you can and invite them all. These people might not be as loyal as your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances but still you will get hits from them as well. Some Twitter users report that about 1-2% of their followers visit their site a day, which means that if you have 1,000 followers, you might expect to get at least 10 or 20 visits a day to your site. This response rate might seem low but there are ways to increase it.
6 Socialize on Twitter as much as you can
When you are active in Twitter, respond to the posts of your followers and visit their links, this seriously increases your chances that you will get the same in return. In a word, actively follow those that follow you.
7 Tweet regularly
As with all other kinds of media, if you want to keep your audience, you need to feed it regularly. Writing a short tweet takes just seconds, but it is enough in order to keep your followers happy. It goes without saying, that you should tweet about useful things, so if you don't have something meaningful to post about you or your sites, it is quite OK to post a link to an article, a video, a blog, etc. you found on the Net and you like.
7Don't spam
You might feel that every single user on Twitter is interested in you and your blog/site but this is not exactly so. You might be tempted to make as many users as you can aware of your Twitter page and your latest tweets but you'd better refrain from doing this, unless you want to see if you can get a ban or not.
8Take advantage of Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is one more useful service you can take advantage of in order to increase your reach. Go to twitterfeed.com and configure your feeds.
9Make Twitter Search love you
Twitter has a great search function and its main advantage is that it offers real-time results. Google might be fast in indexing pages but its indexing is not real-time. Users are hungry for hot news and nothing beats a real-time search. Many bloggers report that they are getting more traffic from Twitter than from Google and partially this is due to the fact that their tweets are popular and users find them with ease.
10Add Twitter gadgets to your site
There are tons of Twitter gadgets and new ones are being released every day. The cool thing about Twitter gadgets is that your blog visitors can become your Twitter followers. If your Twitter followers have many followers, chances are that some of these followers will notice you and will join your network. As we already mentioned, building a large and targeted network is key to getting more Twitter traffic to your site.
These are some of the main ways in which you can get traffic from Twitter. If you are creative and if you monitor what's going on on Twitter and what new Twitter gadgets are released, you will certainly find more ways to drive traffic from Twitter to your site.
10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free
Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to get traffic for free:
1Optimize your site for search engines.
Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article.
2Frequently update the contents of your site. .
If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.
3Take advantage of social bookmarking sites.
Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.
4Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.
5Get links with other sites in your niche.
Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.
6 Use any chance to promote your site for free.
Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.
7Create a free product or service.
Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.
8Use viral content.
Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.
9Use offline promotion.
Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.
10Include your URL in your signature.
URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.
Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.
1Optimize your site for search engines.
Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article.
2Frequently update the contents of your site. .
If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.
3Take advantage of social bookmarking sites.
Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.
4Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.
5Get links with other sites in your niche.
Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.
6 Use any chance to promote your site for free.
Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.
7Create a free product or service.
Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.
8Use viral content.
Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.
9Use offline promotion.
Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.
10Include your URL in your signature.
URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.
Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Which Is The Value Of Web Directory Listings
Which Is The Value Of Web Directory Listings
This article is about getting free one-way links and the role of free web directories in the seo process.
In plain words, the seo technique of free directory submission is mostly about getting one-way links from free web directories. Be sure to avoid directory inclusions with the tag ‘ rel=”nofollow” ‘ in their HTML code. You can check if a directory has this tag by typing Ctrl+U in your web browser.
Directories still count as ‘backlinks’ for the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. It is a fact that directory inclusions do not count as much as they used to in the past, but still, links from web directories are like voting a websites as far as search engines are concerned.
In some cases, a listing from a directory page passes Pagerank. Google uses a complex ranking system aka Pagerank, to rank websites based on multiple factors that grant ranking authority. This is the case of established web directories with high Pagerank, usually built a couple of years back with a lot of pages indexed by Google.
There are thousands of free web directories out there in English and hundreds in non-English spoken directories. To submit to free directories you only need to fill in a submission form with your website’s data. Lets get into submission details. It is best that you have prepared one to three titles that best suit your website with a maximum length of 100 characters. Titles are key parts in acquiring one-way links. You should put your best or second-best keywords in the title so that you can rank higher in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS). Your brand name should have a position in the title. I could not stress more the importance of titles.
Now the rest of the submission data. Prepare a description with at least two variations, and with a maximum character length: a smaller one up to 255 characters and a bigger one up to 500. Most directories will not tollerate promotional language in the description field.
You will also need to provide three to nine tags, that best suit your business and a working email to confirm the submission. Do not submit with false emails! Directories have some sort of spam protection or CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) form field.
Regarding the selection of the right category for your business: Directories have so many listing variations that you need to be extra careful in choosing the best category or your submission will be rejected. There are cases when the option of selecting a relative category are more than two. Automated software can not give a solution there, whereas a human submitter can do.
Use a directory submission service run by humans to do your submissions. Do not rely on automated software. Automated software may produce submission mistakes. You can not have full control over your submissions if you use automated software.
A final advice. Avoid submitting to too many directories, like hundreds within a short time span. These practices could be considered spam from the search engines.
For useful advice about the topic of internet marketing uk – go through this web page. The time has come when proper info is really only one click away, use this chance.
SEO friendly Web design
This article is about getting free one-way links and the role of free web directories in the seo process.
In plain words, the seo technique of free directory submission is mostly about getting one-way links from free web directories. Be sure to avoid directory inclusions with the tag ‘ rel=”nofollow” ‘ in their HTML code. You can check if a directory has this tag by typing Ctrl+U in your web browser.
Directories still count as ‘backlinks’ for the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. It is a fact that directory inclusions do not count as much as they used to in the past, but still, links from web directories are like voting a websites as far as search engines are concerned.
In some cases, a listing from a directory page passes Pagerank. Google uses a complex ranking system aka Pagerank, to rank websites based on multiple factors that grant ranking authority. This is the case of established web directories with high Pagerank, usually built a couple of years back with a lot of pages indexed by Google.
There are thousands of free web directories out there in English and hundreds in non-English spoken directories. To submit to free directories you only need to fill in a submission form with your website’s data. Lets get into submission details. It is best that you have prepared one to three titles that best suit your website with a maximum length of 100 characters. Titles are key parts in acquiring one-way links. You should put your best or second-best keywords in the title so that you can rank higher in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS). Your brand name should have a position in the title. I could not stress more the importance of titles.
Now the rest of the submission data. Prepare a description with at least two variations, and with a maximum character length: a smaller one up to 255 characters and a bigger one up to 500. Most directories will not tollerate promotional language in the description field.
You will also need to provide three to nine tags, that best suit your business and a working email to confirm the submission. Do not submit with false emails! Directories have some sort of spam protection or CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) form field.
Regarding the selection of the right category for your business: Directories have so many listing variations that you need to be extra careful in choosing the best category or your submission will be rejected. There are cases when the option of selecting a relative category are more than two. Automated software can not give a solution there, whereas a human submitter can do.
Use a directory submission service run by humans to do your submissions. Do not rely on automated software. Automated software may produce submission mistakes. You can not have full control over your submissions if you use automated software.
A final advice. Avoid submitting to too many directories, like hundreds within a short time span. These practices could be considered spam from the search engines.
For useful advice about the topic of internet marketing uk – go through this web page. The time has come when proper info is really only one click away, use this chance.
SEO friendly Web design
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Social Media Optimization
Social Media Optimization(SMO) what people are talking about it? Know some of the facts about SMM as people do not know much about it.
Suppose some incident happened to you and when a user of a social media website finds it interesting, he/she likes to share it with his/her friends. This makes the incident to ‘go viral’ and is shared with hundreds of users. This in turn creates thousands of visitors, launching of a website or a new product and brings in good amount of back links. These back links increases your site visits and ultimately aids your SEO.
It is paramount to have quality content when you are using social media marketing as it helps to pass on more quickly and to many people. Well, we will learn to create such attractive content in the upcoming articles on SMO.
Good and mesmerising content will get easy going around the web but for that you need a larger network on these social media sites for better marketing. Your network will give the initial thrust, raising the possibility of the incident going viral.
In spite of this, if direct marketing is done than the chances of web content going viral reduces. On social media sites, people do not want to be used as a marketing tool, hence initial SMO should be a conversation, debate or discussion rather than having a sales pitch. Later on, you can add impressive sales touch, once social media marketing push is over.
Author :
Email: articles@visiondezigns.com
Web: http://visiondezigns.com/
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Size really matters....
Back to the days when newsletters first hit the Internet, they were usually published in text format because many email clients did not support HTML email just yet. One of the problems many publishers faced was long URLs being split in half and not being click able to the reader. To solve this problem, shortening services started to spring up that would take a long URL and cut it down to a reasonable size. With the popularity of Twitter and the confines of 140 characters, URL (link) shortening services are in high demand once again. When you have such a small amount of space to work with, no one wants a long URL cutting into that precious real estate. There are a variety of shortening services to choose from, each having their own specific features and benefits. Most of them do work hand in hand with Twitter, allowing you to Tweet the link once it's been shortened. If you're an avid Twitter user this is a useful feature to have. Some only offer a basic shortening service, but many allow you to view stats and metrics on your newly shortened links if you register. If you're doing any form of social media marketing, it's nice to be able to see if anyone's actually clicking on all the links you're sending out to the "Twitosphere", or posting on Facebook and other sites. Tracking will give you an indication that you're being heard and that people are actually paying attention to what you have to say. Another important thing to look for is whether or not the shortening service uses 301 redirects. This is the most search engine friendly, and forces the search engine to look at the destination URL, not the domain of the shortening service itself. A 301 stands for a permanent move, not temporary. What this means is, you want the links you're sending out to be given credit by the search engines, not the shortening service itself. Make sense? Many allow custom URLs, which allows you to use your name or company name in the links you create. This is great for branding purposes. Think of it as a vanity license plate. Instead of being just a regular URL it's your own special creation. Let's review a few options:
1) http://TweetBurner.com- A bare bones tracking service which allows you to shorten any link and then share it instantly with your Twitter followers or Friend-feed. Basic stat tracking is available so you can see how many people clicked on your link.
2) http://Cli.gs - A shortening service which includes full analytics. You can create links that include your brand in them. Free to use. It's easy to send your links to Twitter with one click.
3) http://Bit.ly - This is Twitter's default shortening service and used by Tweetdeck.com. It allows you to track performance of your links in real time. Easy to share generated links on Twitter, Facebook, even Gmail. It also offers many extra tools and plug-ins such as a browser bookmarklet and browser sidebar.
4) http://MyTwitterToolbar.com - Free to download and comes complete with a massive list of URL shorteners as well as over 50 Twitter tools. Also includes 100 Twitter tips.
5) http://www.TwitClicks.com - A fairly simple service that allows you to shorten a URL immediately and tweet it. Can also see complete stats. Detailed stats show percentage of browsers used and locations of those who clicked. Check out a short video on how to use it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ScPeCd6X4
6) http://www.ExpandMyUrl.com - This service takes a shortened link and gives you the true URL that it points to. Perfect for the paranoid individual who wants to know where the shortened link will send them.
7 http://www.TwitPwr.com - A short URL service which also includes analytics and stats. Their home page shows the top 25 users with the most TwitPwr and also a "hot URL" list of those URL's that get the most clicks. Free to use.
8 http://1link.in - A multiple link shortening service. Simply type in a list of links and get one link back for all. If you click on the newly shortened link it goes to a page showing details of what sites that link points to, and asks if you want to open them all. If you answer yes, multiple windows will open for each site.
9) http://Go2.me - A different type of link shortening and discussion service which creates shorter links which also contain a chat window to exchange comments with your readers. It's also easy to share on Twitter, Facebook or email with one click.
10) http://Tw.itter.me - You can customize the shortened link with your name or company name. From what I saw no stats are available.
11) http://budurl.com/ - Another popular service which shows you a real time view of your inbound clicks. This free service allows you to track up to 250 Budurl's. They offer 3 pay levels of service from $4.00 a month to $49.00 a month. There is a 21 day free trial on any paid service. You can start out free and upgrade your account at any time.
12) http://Tr.Im - Trim those long URL's and instantly share them on Twitter. If you want stats, you'll need to register. Offers many different tools and extensions to make for easier sharing, such as a Firefox extension that allows you to view your tr.im stats and tweet your new links quickly.
13) http://short.ie - Keeps all your shortened links in one place. Tracks clicks and allows you to instantly share your list with friends. It can also be connected to your Twitter account for more features. Customization of URL's also available.
14) http://hootsuite.com: Not really a URL shortening service, but has the ability built-in. Hootsuite is a "Twitter Toolbox" loaded with features which are all free. They use ow.ly as their built in link shortener. If you've never tried a url shortening service, you'll want to find one that fits your needs and start to really utilize it in your online marketing activities. Finding out who's clicking on your links, time of day, where they're from and other information will be very valuable in your ongoing efforts as an Internet Marketer.
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