The plugin Pretty Links is named appropriately because It transforms your links into a pretty URL. Most URL links are long and impersonal, but pretty links makes each link unique to you and your website domain.
Blair Williams
Shortlinks by Pretty Links
I would like to inform you that I may make a commission when you click my links and make purchases. I am an affiliate of Wealthy Affiliate; however, this does not change my reviews and comparisons. I work very hard to keep things fair and balanced based on my opinion so that you can make an informed decision.
Let me introduce you.
Blair Williams designed Pretty Links. He is an online Entrepreneur and Software Developer who uses WordPress as his focus in developing software and businesses. You may recognize some of Blairs’ popular plugins such as MemberPress, Pretty Links and Affiliate Royal.
What is Pretty Links?
Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin that boasts the ability to beautify, track, organize, cloak, share and shorten links. Pretty Links use your brand and domain name to form a new link that is shorter and easier to manage. Pretty Links outweighs the competition like bitly and tiny URL because it is personal and has so many more features. Not to mention their logo is incredible and puts a smile on my face every time I look at it.
Who needs Pretty Links?
My answer to this question is anyone and everyone who does affiliate marketing or places links in their posts. It will protect your site from Google dings and can increase your conversion rate.
What are the benefits?
Pretty Links helps build your online presence by shortening your URLs with your domain.
Let’s take a look at the competition and shorten this URL to one of my posts to see how important Pretty Links are.
The post URL is: https://resignwithmoney.com/my-wealthy-affiliate-it-might-be-for-you/
Pretty Links- https://resignwithmoney.com/laura3
Bitly- https://bit.ly/2AVA0PP
Tiny URL- https://tinyurl.com/y8ofm49f
While all three of these URL shortening tools are good ways to shorten your URL, Pretty Links include your domain in the makeover. It is easier for your readers to remember your site when your domain is visible in the shortened version. And it can increase your conversion rate by up to 25%
I used a short example, but you can easily see the increased benefits of Pretty Links and how it incorporates my domain with my name at the end.
Why shorten a URL?
- It is easier to share on social media.
A shorter URL is more comfortable to remember and has less character to share on Twitter and Facebook - Makes links easier to manipulate.
Most links look and are messy. URL shorteners do just exactly what it says they make the shortened link pretty.
What is the price of PRO?
Beginner
"Essential Pro features for those who’re just getting started."-
Use on 1 WordPress site
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Advanced Redirect Types
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Auto Create Pretty Links
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Auto-Link Keywords
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1 Year of Support & Updates
Marketer
"Best for marketers who are serious about their link strategy."-
Use on up to 5 WordPress sites
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Advanced Redirect Types
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Auto Create Pretty Links
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Auto-Link Keywords
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Advanced Add-Ons (Coming Soon)
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1 Year of Support & Updates
Super Affiliate
"Perfect for Super affiliates and leaders who want big results."-
Use on up to 25 WordPress Sites
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Advanced Redirect Types
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Auto Create Pretty Links
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Auto-Link Keywords
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Advanced Add-Ons (Coming Soon)
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1 Year of Support & Updates
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Priority Support
How do you use Pretty Links?
- Use the button above to Download the Pretty Links Plugin to a Zipfile
- Follow the instructions of the button below if you are not familiar with how to upload a zipfile to your website.
When you have activated the plugin follow this photo to set up your first Pretty Link
Is there support?
Pretty Links Lite members have access to a user manual to get you started, learn how to use Pretty Links and troubleshoot. Also available to you is the support forum at wordpress.org.
Pretty Links Pro members have the added support of Premium Support Request
The support is phenomenal and extensive to assist you with any question you may have. Pretty Links developers are defiantly here to help their customers.
What I like
Don't like
- Quick link pretty link on dashboard-I can make a Pretty Link directly from my dashboard which improves my productivity
- Choose a Pretty Link from the post toolbar- I can add one of my Pretty Links to a post by clicking on the yellow star in my toolbar as I write a post.
- Organize Pretty Links into groups for ease of finding. I can make as many groups as needed
- Cloaking-this feature hides a business URL from Facebook and Instagram. There are some business that social media platforms will not allow as links
- No follow options-Google frowns on too many links. I can no follow the links and Google can’t see them.
- The new link with my domain. My domain in the new link helps my readers remember the link, and it looks more professional
- Link tracking with graph and ability to search each link to see the link progress
- Pretty Links will automatically set links for each post and page. A major time-saving option
- Social sharing-shortens link for twitter requirements for the character limit
- Pretty Links offers no option to customize link prefixes. I love the use of my domain as a prefix, but on occasion, I would also like to have the opportunity to change the prefix.
- There are some features like the Pretty bar that I don’t use and don’t find necessary. It would be difficult for me to say I don’t like it I just don’t see it as useful
Pretty Links Lite vs
Pretty Links Pro
- Add new links-create a new shortened link from your site URL- title it for ease of finding and group it for ease of organizing
- No, follow links– Google can not crawl the links on your website and therefore will not ding you for too many links.
- Track links to see the flow of clicks on each link and you can customize the report to show all clicks or just unique clicks. You can search each click to give a more detailed description.
- Bookmarklet-a tool to use on iPhone to shorten links you find on the web. Stores the Pretty Link for later use
- Trim clicks-you can clean up the number of clicks shown in track links. Let loose of the old clicks so you can better see how your clicks are trending now.
- Reporting options like redirect, automatically trim clicks, filter robots and exclude IP addresses that do not make you happy.
- Auto-replace keywords in your site
- Cloaked Redirects will protect your affiliate links – social media platforms frown upon some companies and will not allow their links on a home page or business page. With cloaking, you can hide the company URL and sneak past the social media platforms.
- Visitor’s location will determine redirect with PRO
- Check all Pages & Posts and automatically generate Pretty Links- Pretty link will automatically create a link for every page and post on your site
- Split testing your links to see what works and what does not work-split testing allows you to change any redirect that is not driving the most traffic to your site
PRO is the answer to your linking needs.
I am an affiliate marketer, and I use Pretty Links every day. It eases my mind and helps my site to look more professional. If you would like to know more about affiliate marketing, please click the add below. Wealthy has taught me everything I need to know to be an online business entrepreneur. Anyone can learn with the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
Another great product you may enjoy: WordPress GeneratePress Theme-Best Friends For Life
It is FREE to take a look: no obligation, no risk, just FREE. If you don’t like it, you log out if you do you take a look around and see what you think.
The bottom line!
Pretty Links offer some incredible options with the lite version. I was satisfied with the lite version until I saw the PRO features. I was so happy to have the opportunity to upgrade, and the cloaking alone was enough to convince me.
Pretty links is the best link shortner, hands down. Go ahead and click here or on the photo to download the plugin. Go ahead please try the lite version, and you will quickly see how vital the PRO version is to build your business.
You may have questions. I am here to assist you in any way I can. Please leave a comment below, and I will be back with you very shortly.
This is a pretty cool plug in that will make our links, well, as they should be – not only short but pretty.
I was introduced to Pretty Links by a friend who has been doing affiliate marketing way ahead of me and I thought it’s really neat. So I tried using it to create nice-looking affiliate links. There’s just one problem I had and that is, that my website load time has slowed down. This could be due to too many plug ins that I installed.
So I had to temporarily deactivate it until such time that I have enough contents into which I will integrate my affiliate links. By the way, isn’t there a free starter account for Pretty Links so we can try it out for a couple of months before deciding if it is worth investing money into it?
Alice, You got my mind working. I searched the pretty links plugin. It says, lightweight. But that is not good enough. So I searched an extensive list of plugins that slow down the site and pretty links are not on any list of a few hundred plugins.
I do hope you can use it because it is excellent to cloak links and the no follow option in the free version is a favorite of mine.
Yes, there is a free version that you can use as long as you like. It is good but the pro version has more really cool options.
Hi Laura,
I have read the whole review of Pretty links plugin. I believe this is the best Plugin for link shortener. I have little bit concern about this plugin. Is it possible to shorten link using this plugin for non wordpress site through my domain name? And if I want to customize it for other domain name, is there any problem? I am going to bookmark it for more thorough analysis. Thanks for sharing this review.
Hello, these are great questions. Yes, you can use it to shorten any link and you can download it to any site. But you can not change the prefix so the site you have it on will use the domain of that site.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for the great reminder about Pretty Links. I did put this plugin on my site a while back but have forgotten about it in the daily business of life. Your article has motivated me to go back and start using it again.
I like the fact that with the pro version you can change all the links on your site to pretty links automatically. That is maybe the answer to saving many hours of hard work changing all my links.
You are welcome my pleasure. I know what you mean about time-saving. I love that feature also. When you do start using it again be sure you check the no-follow option. Google will not follow all of the link redirections and you will not be dinged for too many links. But still be mindful of loading your site with too many links, please. If I can be of assistance to you please let me know.
Thank you for this insightful post. I have been using bitly as my URL shortener and without complaint, however, I have always felt that it is more geared to promote bitly itself rather than my website. from personal experience myself, I find it hard to trust URLs that do not directly implicit what you are clicking on. Pretty links is perfect for website branding and feels more personalized and have trustworthiness about it seeing your site being referenced. I will be sure to give it a try after this. thank you
Hello, Bitly is a good link changer but as you stated Pretty Links is more personal and helps to build your brand. Not to mention is so easy to remember a pretty link. Why don’t you try pretty links for free on your site to see how you like it. I think it will be a good fit for you.
Hey,
Thanks for the informative post. It’s funny that I came upon this article because I just heard about link shorteners about a week ago and I must say Im intrigued. So I’m pretty new to the website designing arena but i have found that there are a lot of tiny things you can do to improve your site. Maybe this is one of the qualities i should invest in? I’m trying to put some finishing details on my website that put me above others. Would this be a logical idea for me or is it something I should wait on until I’m more acquainted with the website designing? Thanks again!!
Michael
Great questions. If you are linking products on your site to outside sources then it would be good to go ahead and use this plugin. If you haven’t started this yet you could wait a bit. But the link pretty links is good for posting on social media as well. It shortens the URL so it is not as long and fits better on Twitter. The cloaking option in the premium is really good for social media as some platforms will not allow a business URL. the cloaking actually hides your business URL from the algorithm.
All the best to you on your new website. If I can help in any way please let me know.