Although it may sound complicated at first, URL Forwarding is actually a very simple technique you can easily use to improve your ad results, increase click-throughs on your links, and make more sales.
What exactly is URL forwarding?
URL forwarding (also called URL redirecting) is a tool that lets you to "cloak" or shorten your Website address to an easier-to-remember URL. For example, let's say you've got the following address:
http://www.basicwebsiteurl.com/myspecificaddress/1234_abc-defghi?jkl.mnop.html
Instead of inserting this rather unwieldy URL into your classified or online ads, flyers, business cards, etc., you could mask this long URL as a much shorter, friendlier address that potential customers will remember and can type into their browsers much more easily:
Even better, by using a URL forwarder, you can also track where your visitors come from when visiting your sites.
Why Use URL Forwarding?
Facebook, Twitter, and most other social media sites don't allow affiliate URLs to be posted at all. This restriction is a result of the growing popularity of affiliate programs: increasing numbers of entrepreneurs were posting their affiliate links to these and other sites, overwhelming them with unrelated content and long URLs, often from a relatively few affiliate programs.
This "problem of success" has also spilled over into e-mail. Several major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) automatically route e-mails containing affiliate URLs to junk folders...if they deliver them at all. This means that few, if any, of the alerts, newsletters, notifications, or welcome messages you're e-mailing to your team members may actually ever make it to your intended recipients!
What's more, Google, Bing, and most other major search engines no longer index affiliate URLs when compiling their search results, to avoid cluttering their databases with similar or identical Web pages from the same source. An affiliate ID in the URL is a dead giveaway to these types of sites. Moreover, some visitors won't click your Website link if it appears to be an affiliate site. This consumer bias may not seem fair to respectable home-business owners, but it's a fact of life of which successful entrepreneurs must face and adapt.
Fee-Based Vs. Free URL Forwarders:
Although free URL forwarding services sound like a good idea, it's important to keep in mind that these services are supported through ads that will appear on your forwarded site. This type of setup tends to look amateurish and distracts your customers' attention from the content on your Website.
Fortunately, a simple online search will yield several reasonably priced fee-based URL forwarders to fit almost any budget. SFI also offers its own, lifetime fowarding service that, for a nominal, one-time fee, will provide you with your own special, prestigious domain you can use to promote SFI, TripleClicks, Astro Auctions, Eager Zebra, and more for as long as you remain an affiliate in good standing.
If the Lifetime Custom Prestige Domain For SFI Affiliates or other fee-based URL forwarding services is beyond your budget right now, a free service may be better than nothing. Simply search for "free URL forwarding" on Google, and go from there. IMPORTANT! Be sure to check the fine print to ensure you're not signing up for services you don't want.
Some Extras To Consider:
Besides a shorter URL, some forwarding services may offer the following resources (either for free or for an extra fee):
URL Masking: URL Masking allows your URL forwarding name to stay in the address bar instead of your long URL. If your visitors decide to add your site to their favorites, your shortened URL will be added to their favorites and not the long domain name. Also, search engines will link to your shorter URL as well.
Traffic Stats with Referrer Reports: Using traffic stats with referrer reports will show you how many visitors you are getting to your site throughout the day. You will be able to see from which sites your visitors are coming. Using the referrer reports of sites where your visitors have seen your ad will allow you to know which of your advertising sites to keep using.
Path Forwarding: This allows you to forward users to a certain path and/or file on your Website by adding the path and/or file to the end of your prefix.
Frame Kill: Frame Kill forces your site to pop out of any frames it might be loading in. This is especially useful when you are linked to another Website and your site opens inside a frame on their page.
Meta Tag Support: Allows you to add tags for keywords, title, and site description to your shortened URL for search engine listings.
Mirror Support: Helps ensure that your URL fowarding address will continue to work, even if your Web host's server goes down. NOTE: This support does not affect the destination URL to which you're fowarding, of course, as that resides on a different server.