Real estate agents can use the URL shortener to measure in digital.

One thing about web links is this: they aren’t pretty. They’re often long and very complex-looking. And when real estate agents want to share links to their web site, listings or other digital content, it can be somewhat clunky.

For example, the link to this blog post:

https://www.adwerx.com/blog/how-does-retargeting-for-real-estate-marketing-work/

Of course, that’s not very nice to insert into text. So instead, you can embed the link on your copy. It would look like this: How does retargeting for real estate work? Then you can use it cleanly in an email or blog post.

But one downside to linking directly to your real estate web site or real estate content is that it can be tricky to measure how many people actually click on it. If you use Google Analytics, you’ll get some data under what’s called “referral” data, as in a list of sites that referred traffic to you.

If you have a Google Analytics account, go to the left-hand side, click “Traffic Sources” followed by “Referrals.” A table displays the names of domains referring traffic to your site, as well as statistics on how visitors react to what they find.

But there is another way to track clicks on URLs. That is to use a URL shortened. In this case, bit.ly.

And it’s easy to get started.

Create a free account on bit.ly
Paste in your url
Copy the bit.ly link

Now anytime you want to share the link, use the bit.ly URL. The links work for emails, blog posts, Twitter and Facebook. Then log back in to bit.ly and check how it’s doing. You’ll know which sites are sending you traffic.

Use bit.ly for Adwerx digital ads

Real estate agents who use Adwerx digital ads get results on how their ads are performing — including how many times the ads were shown (impressions) and how many people interacted with their ads (clicks).

We’ve seen agents use bit.ly links for their web pages to have a second layer of analytics, especially if they have other channels promoting their destination page. So instead of pasting in your web site, use a bit.ly link and track your Adwerx ads yourself!

Bit.ly is an easy, free way to measure and manage your digital marketing efforts!