What Is a Vanity URL? How to Create a Vanity URL Free (With Examples)
What is a vanity URL? It's a short, readable link you can say out loud, like yourbrand.com/sale, sitting in front of a long address nobody would ever type. Here's what vanity URLs are, where they're worth having, and how to create one free in about a minute, with examples.
Transcript
The full spoken transcript, split by chapter.
- 0:00What a vanity URL is
- A vanity URL is a link you can say out loud. Your brand, slash, sale. Instead of sixty characters nobody's ever going to type. Here's what they are, where they're worth it, and how to make one in about a minute.
- 0:13Why long links fail in print
- Here's a real product link. Question marks and tracking tags, and somewhere in there an ID number. It works, but you can't put that on a poster. A vanity URL sits in front of it. It's short, and it says where it goes. The long link's still doing the work underneath. That's why you see them on billboards, in podcasts, on the side of vans. Anywhere somebody has to remember it.
- 0:34Create a vanity URL
- So let me make one. The long link goes in here. Now the part that matters, the ending. I'll call it plant sale. Lowercase, a hyphen between the words, and no dates you'll regret in January. Save.
- 0:47Put it on your own domain
- And that's it. Type the short one in, and you land on exactly the same page as the long one. One step further. The front half can be your own domain, so the whole link reads as yours. That needs a DNS record, so it's a five minute job rather than a one minute one. Worth it if the link's going on anything permanent.
- 1:05Clicks counted, destination editable
- Two things a vanity URL does that a redirect on your own site doesn't. It counts. Every click, with the country and the device. And when the sale page changes, you change where it points. The poster stays the same.
- 1:18The catch on shared domains
- One honest catch. On a shared domain, endings are first come, first served, so the obvious ones go quickly. On your own domain, they're all yours. It's free to start, and everything you need is just below this video.
