The past few years has seen a rise in URL shorteners.
(I wrote an article on Su.pr – StumbleUpon’s URL shortener a while ago which describes this type of service, which may be of interest.)
URL shortening services take long URLs such as,
and turn them into shorter and more manageable URLs like,
This is particularly handy if you are sharing content on Twitter or via SMS, or other services, where character count is capped.
A lot of companies nowadays are starting to use custom short links when sharing content. They are basically a shorter domain name that spells out or sounds like, your primary domain name.
Custom short domain names have been made popular by companies such as,
You may have noticed The Social Media Guide’s URL is pretty long – thesocialmediaguide.com, so I wanted to create my own custom short URL.
I felt this would help to strengthen my brand by making my shared content more recognisable.. not to mention the cool factor.
Bit.ly – Shorten & Share
The most popular URL shortening service today is bit.ly.
If you are a frequent Twitter user you would have noticed that the majority of links shared by people, have been shortened using bit.ly. You might have even noticed it on other social networks like Facebook as well.
Bit.ly also offer a free Pro service that enables you to shorten links using your own custom domain.
For example, rather than sharing a link as http://bit.ly/jnMxPP.. it would be shared using your own custom domain such as http://custom.com/jnMxPP
This post will show you how to create your own custom short URL using bit.ly/pro
Before we get started, if you haven’t already done so, sign up for a free bit.ly/pro account now.
Custom Short Domain - smgui.de
You now need to get yourself a short domain.. I recommend getting one from GoDaddy.
After experimenting with different combinations of top level domain’s and availability, I decided to go with smgui.de (as in social media guide).
A-record Configuration
Once you have purchased your domain, you need to do some configuring.
You need to set your domain’s A-record to point to 168.143.174.97
– or –
If you are using a subdomain for your custom short domain, set a CNAME in your DNS record that points your subdomain to cname.bitly.com
(see bit.ly/pro/help for more info)
If you don’t know how to do this, then email the place you bought your domain from and they can do it for you.
As you can see here, I have pointed the A-record of my domain smgui.de to 168.143.174.97
Once this has been added it can take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to propagate across the internet.
Turn your computer off and go for a walk.. and come back to this in a day or two.
Configuring Your Custom Short Domain
Login to your bit.ly/pro account.
Under the Custom Short Domain section, enter your custom short domain and click on <Add Short Domain>,
Click on <Verify the Short Domain>,
Wait a couple of minutes..
You will now see Your Custom Short Domain has been verified!,
Configuring Your Dashboard Tracking Domain
You now need to add the domain of your main site.
Scroll down to the Dashboard Tracking Domain section, enter your domain name (minus http://).. and click on <Add Tracking Domain>,
You now need to verify that you actually own your website, using the code that has been displayed.
I opted for adding a HTML tag to my homepage.
Just copy the HTML tag,
As my site uses WordPress, I went to the editor, clicked on header.php.. and pasted in the code just before the closing </head> tag.
Click on <Update File> to save this change,
Click on <Verify Tracking Domain>,
Wait a couple of minutes..
You will now see Tracking Domain has been verified,
Creating a Custom Short URL using Bit.ly
Now that you have configured everything, it is very easy to create your custom URL.
Simply paste into Bit.ly the URL that you want to shorten.. then click <Shorten>,
Presto!
You have just created your own custom short URL,
As you can see this custom URL points to my homepage – http://smgui.de/hBoOTv
Simple and awesome!
Integration With Other Tools & Platforms
But wait.. it gets better..
Bit.ly provides an API Key to all users.. this secret key enables you to integrate Bit.ly’s shortening functionality to 3rd party applications.
Most iPhone Twitter apps allow you to enter this API Key.. enabling you to shrink URLs using your custom short domain.
Your API Key can be found by clicking on your name > Settings,
The Social Media Guide
A perfect example of this can be seen with The Social Media Guide’s online marketing platform.
Log in.. then click on My Profile > My Details.
Enter your Bit.ly API Key and click <Save>,
(NB – this will not work on the 30 day free trial account)
Select the social networks you want to post to and paste in a link that you want to share,
After clicking on <Shrink>you will notice the URL is now shortened with your custom domain,
Click on <Send> to share content on your social networks using your custom short domain.
Enjoy!
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3 Comments
Hi!
And how did you make that your custom short domain redirect people to "thesocialmediaguide.com" and not to bit.ly?
Hi Matthew,
I read your article on setting up a custom short URL with bit.ly and am running into issues with this. I have blueweb.cr established and am using GoDaddy. For some reason, when I go to bit.ly pro and enter blueweb.cr it returns an error message:
Short Domain verification failed for "blueweb.cr". Neither an A Record nor a CNAME record was found.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Hi Sean
That's because your A-record is pointing to 97.74.214.192 – as can be seen here – http://my-addr.com/domain_a_lookup-find_a_record-…
Ask your web host to have this point to 168.143.174.97
Regards
Matt