Okay guys in this lecture you're gonna learn how to shorten and track your links.
Now the reason you're gonna want to do this is twofold.
Number one you're gonna want to track your links in order to know what works when you know what works
what your visitors are clicking on.
You can simply do more of that material and also if you're into affiliate marketing in other words you're
referring some want to a product or service and then getting a commission for it.
You're going to want to track those links.
Now the second reason you're going to want to track and shorten your links is because you look more
professional.
Now when you are linking something for example to a YouTube video you don't want to display that YouTube
link.
Rather for us we're going to want to say for example Robin and desperate dot.com forward slash digital
marketing tutorial rather than going to you to dot come forward slash.
And then a bunch of numbers.
Now you have definitely seen a link Shorten before the most popular being the bit link Shorten and now
I have created a bit link care for Robin and Jasper dot com.
So if anyone would go into this link between dot com forward slash to UK and then just a code then they
would end up Robin and just be dot com and the recent people are doing this to cloak their links so
they don't know all of the values and information that is in there.
For example if you affiliate marketing and you want to hide it.
The problem with this is that a lot of spammers are using bitterly.
So no one really trust clicking into a bitter link because you don't know where you're gonna end up.
Me included.
So we're going to solve this simply by using a plug in there's a plug in for everything guys.
So we're going to go through the back end of our website and we are going to search for pretty links
now.
These are by far the biggest plug in when it comes to links shortening.
I use it all the time.
I think it's just great.
And here it is short links by pretty links and this is best WordPress link tracking plug in and I'm
gonna have to agree I think they've been around for 6 7 years already really stood the test of time
so we're going to click on install now and then we're gonna click on activate.
Great.
So plug in activated we can see this here.
Now we're going to go to the left here and down below we're going to have its own sections for pretty
links.
I'm just gonna go ahead and click there and in here you're gonna see all of the links that you have
created.
You're going to see the amount of clicks they have.
If you have group them when they've been created and what the link is and of course the name you're
gonna give it.
So let me show you how this works and how to use this properly.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna click on Add pretty link and the first option we have is the redirection
now the redirection.
They're just numbers and might seem odd but they're quite important to know because they affect the
search engines.
Now the 3 0 7 redirection means that you are redirecting people to a nod there you are and that this
is temporary.
This is super important to know because it's temporary.
That means that this search engines are not going to be ranking up that link because if they did and
they find out that is temporary you get a penalty and your ranking is lowered.
So if it is temporary we need to put it as temporary so that we don't get too much juice if you will
for R S E O then we have 3 0 2 which is basically the same.
There's a slight difference that it may it's more vague that may be more permanent but I never used
this.
I don't think you should care about it either but the three year one is much more interesting because
this means that it is a permanent redirection with permanent redirection.
I mean that this link is going to stay like this.
This is going to be the new original link.
We're not going to reverse it back again.
So if you're going to keep it like this and you know that we you need to put it as through your one
because then you can rank it up and we're gonna keep it a 3 or want to have the ability to change that
link and I'm going to explain to you why this is important in just a bit.
And then we have the target the dual role.
So for example let's say that I wanted to link to r digital marketing branding video that we made a
blog post about then I would go ahead go to that video and I would go ahead and copy this your URL go
back and I'm gonna paste this in.
Ask the targeted euro and then I get to decide how I want this link to be displayed.
Now this is the difference between bitterly and using a plug in as you can see the link is going to
be Robin and just Brit dot com forward slash.
And then we get to decide the name.
So we could say for example digital marketing success because this is going to help our FCO remember
that was the focus keyword when we did the blog post.
This is going to help this FCO is going to help with looking more professional and being more direct
showing exactly what it is about.
So rather than having this when they click on the link or hover over they're going to get this instead
looking much much much better and helping with your FCO then we're gonna give it a title and this title
is internal.
This is for your eyes only so we're gonna write for example digital marketing branding YouTube video
and then we could put some notes and the notes are especially hard if you are doing any form of affiliate
marketing for example.
OK.
And then we have some advanced options as well.
And now the first one would be if you would want to add them into a group for example it might be valuable
to have a group for affiliate links might be valuable to have a group for YouTube videos et cetera et
cetera for your own eyes.
And then we have the no follow and the no follow is also important.
It goes hand in hand with the redirect then no follow make sure that Google and other search engines
doesn't follow the link and rank it higher when people click on it because the more people click on
it the better.
Our CEO is now.
If we put this as a permanent link change then we could go ahead and remove the no follow and then we
would have a site called do follow.
Meaning we want the search engines to follow the link and rank it up because this link is going to stay
permanent.
It's not going to change but for us we don't have to worry about this we're gonna keep it simple on
temporary and then no follow is automatically checked in.
We also have something called param meta forwarding and this is advanced feature.
I just want explained to you what it is but we're not going to use it.
It basically means that if you have values did you want to add into the link for example your affiliate
marketing and you want to add in what you affiliate name is what the affiliate product is the affiliate
website and you want to change those values.
You could add in your own values to the link.
No need for us to do that.
If you're not an advanced user don't bother with this one and then we have the tracking and we want
to have the tracking.
There are also pro options but you're gonna need to buy it for these.
And honestly I have never used the pro options.
I have only used a light version.
The free version and I think it works amazingly well.
So there we go and then we're just gonna go ahead and create it.
So now we have our first link in here.
Now the beautiful thing like I showed you earlier we get to see the link click if we have a group.
When it was created and the way that link looks like now the amazing feature with this is that once
you started using this link in a bunch of different posts for example and you noticed that well all
of the links to this certain video I want to update this video but I don't want to go through you know
200 posts and change all the links manually.
You can go over here where it says edits click on it and then you can change the target and you RL Which
means that you will have changed the video for all of those posts using this link and that's an amazing
feature that's going to save you so much time and hassle so you get to track your links.
The link looks much better much more professional and trustworthy.
And you have the bulk option later on to manage them all at once.
If you want to update something now remember this could be a YouTube video affiliate link an article
could be anything that you over time want to update in that post you get to update them all at once.
So for us personally what we would like to do is to go back and create a new pretty link and then add
targeted you are all to our for example digital marketing course.
Now we want the links to be looking like this.
That is the targeted euro.
And then Robin just before we slash digital dash marketing it's important that you use a dash here when
you are working with the links not the success.
There we go.
So we wanted to look like this when they are being linked to our course because we don't want to give
out you do Miss links.
We want to give out our own links to look much more professional than we are directing and also improve
our S E O.
So that is for us personally.
Now have a look at what you are linking your service your product and download pretty link.
Start customizing them so that you later on can use them.
Okay guys great job.
Download this plugin.
It's super useful and I see you in the next lecture.