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Thursday, 15 February 2018 18:07

Online Social Identity - Part 2 (Vanity URLs)

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Before going any further we need to discuss vanity urls, what are they, who uses them and should i have one. Not all services need or use vanity URLs and some services will give you a premade link that you cannot change which will be linked to your username/Email address. For those that dont you can either keep everything the same as we discussed in the previous part to this series or you can furhter use these rules to decide your Vanity URLs.

A vanity URL is a unique human readable web address that is usually easy to remember and share. These can be for companies or individuals.

  • Vanity URLs are better for SEO and makes you easier to find
  • Once you decide on a suitable URL you should use it throughout your social media to keep a brand going
  • Not all services allow you to change your Vanity URL once set.

NB: Don’t rush in setting up your Vanity URLS, it won’t make that much difference at the beginning if you want to do this later. It is easier and better to do this step at the beginning though.

Example Vanity URLs

These are examples URLs from JoomlaShine framework that show you what all main social networks have for their vanity URLS

Facebook Vanity URL Examples

Twitter Vanity URL Examples

To Capitalise or Not (vanity/SEF URL)

This question might not be as simple as you think.

I asked this question to a local internet company:

I am in the process of setting up my online presence, and after working out how it all works and my last stumbling block is ‘Vanity URLs’.  I need to know whether it is better to use capitalisation for better readability or all lowercase which might reduce 301 redirects. Is there a standard to be followed. I will also use my chosen standard across all my social platforms.

Eg a test blog , greenfields.com , but should all my URLs be like

and got this response:

In general, we’d always advise lowercase, as that is the “standard” (as much as there is one) for the web. In practice it doesn’t matter too much what you name your pages as long as they link together correctly. I would also avoid redirects from upper to lowercase, as really if someone hits something they shouldn’t, a good 404 (page not found) should be able to point them in the correct direction.

With Capitals (CamelCase)

Pros Cons
  • Easier to read
  • Can be used to help branding (i.e. see TWiT)
  • Not all systems might support capitals
  • Someone is most likely to type the address in with no capitals
  • When you go to a similar address (i.e. QuantumWarp/quantumwarp) the site will most likely 301 re-direct
  • Google might see 2 pages when people only post the all lower case link
  • Many variations of the same word.

All lowercase

Pros Cons
  • Fairly standard
  • All systems support lowercase URLs
  • Not likely to get similar links (i.e. QuantumWarp/quantumwarp) pointing to your page, so is better for SEO
  • Only 1 version so duplication should arrive
  • Someone is most likely to type the address in with no capitals
  
  • Slightly harder to read
  • Plain (boring!)
  • Not as easy to say out loud

What I have decided and why

All lowercase - e.g. quantumwarp

  • Look at JoomlaShine, they have 2 words in their name but use all lowercase
  • There is a 50/50 split on lowercase/capitalised social URLs in big companies
  • SEO companies seem to use lowercase (check this statement)
  • Easy to make sure all my social sites will be the same (not all might support capitals (further research here required)
  • Blog sites seem to use lowercase (arstechnica) this might be because it matches their domain name and is better for SEO
  • Companies with a brand that are not running a blog site but has another purpose i.e. TWiT seem to use capitals. So that being said, those who are running a blog and have their social links the same as their blog name, should use all lowercase.
  • Not all services perform a 301 redirect to your chosen URL. i.e. twitter does a re-write so you can have multiple URLs with the same content
  • The response from my local internet company who do this more than I do.

Vanity URL Links

 

Read 1191 times Last modified on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 16:12
Published in Blogging
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