Over the last decade, the marketing technology field has given rise to a plethora of high-quality digital marketing and SEO tools that make life easier for anyone planning and executing a marketing strategy.
Today, we’re going to focus on one important thing that every digital marketer needs to have in their toolbox: a link management tool.
To help you optimize your marketing campaigns and drive traffic with links that beg to be clicked on, let’s take a look at the benefits of using a link management solution and seven of the best link management tools available today.
Note: These tools were found during our online research while writing this article.
What is a link management tool?
Digital marketers are sharing links every single day via:
- Email marketing outreach
- Social media platforms
- PPC ads
- Calls-to-actions at the end of blog articles
With links playing such a central role in just about every aspect of digital marketing and ecommerce, optimizing how they are created and used can be a pretty big deal!
Link management tools offer a lot of features and functionality when it comes to creating, publishing, and managing links for use in marketing materials.
This includes features like the ability to create short URLs, custom URLs, and branded links, as well as tracking links and monitoring their performance metrics.
Benefits of using a tool for link management
Using a link management platform can offer a lot of advantages to marketers, bloggers, and anyone else who wishes to leverage the power of link management.
Here are some of the top benefits that you can look forward to:
Link shortening
Anyone who’s spent time online knows that links to web pages are typically long and unwieldy. This might not be a problem for the average internet user. But long URLs that take up half the page can be a real problem for the digital marketer striving to create sleek and attractive marketing materials.
With a URL shortener like Bitly, marketers can turn long URLs into space-saving and attractive short links with just the click of a button. This makes it much easier to optimize the character limits you have available and create sleek, eye-catching links that your audience will want to click on.
Enhanced tracking
When you’re using links to send followers or subscribers somewhere like a product or landing page, it’s critical to know how those links perform. With a good link management tool, you can track how people engage with your links in real-time. This includes monitoring important metrics like:
- Impressions
- Referral sources
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Geographic data
Branded links
Turning long URLs into much more manageable short URLs is a great place to start your link management strategy, but what if you really want to create a lasting impression for your audience?
With branded links (also known as custom links), you can create short URLs that contain a branded or custom domain name.
For example, a regular link shortening tool might spit out a short URL like “bit.ly/abcd123”, whereas a branded link would look like “yourbrand.com/promo.“
Using a tool like Bitly, you can create more recognizable, memorable, and eye-catching links for your marketing content.
Social media optimization
Surveys find that small businesses prefer social media over all other digital marketing channels, but it’s every bit as valuable for larger organizations. Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram can all be excellent resources for reaching potential customers.
If you want to get them off of social media and onto your website, however, you’re going to have to use links to get them there.
Link management tools enable you to create shortened, visually appealing links that fit perfectly within the character constraints of social media posts. They also make it easy to track their performance, helping you optimize your social media marketing strategy.
Link performance insights
Link management tools offer valuable insights into the performance of individual links. Thanks to advanced analytics and reporting features, these tools can provide invaluable data about how people engage with your links.
With a link management service like Bitly, you can track click-through rates, impressions, geographic data, and a range of other key link performance metrics.
Campaign tracking and attribution
For marketers running multiple campaigns across numerous marketing channels, tracking which campaigns are actually driving results can often be challenging. But with the best tools for link tracking, campaign tracking and attribution are much easier.
Link management tools let you create unique, trackable links for each campaign you launch. By attributing link clicks to specific campaigns, you can figure out which campaigns drive the most traffic and conversions and then use this data to optimize your marketing efforts.
The 7 best tools for link management
Now that we’ve covered the numerous benefits of using a high-quality link management tool, let’s spotlight some of the top options available.
1. Bitly
Bitly is an all-in-one link management platform that lets you shorten URLs, create custom links, and track link performance—all from one user-friendly dashboard!
Bitly offers all of the features you need to create links that will make a positive impression on your audience. Quite simply, it’s one of the best URL shorteners on the market.
Once you’ve used Bitly to create a short or custom URL, you can track your link’s performance in real-time using advanced analytics and reporting features.
In addition to short and custom URLs, Bitly also makes it easy to create unique QR Codes and Link-in-bio pages that can be used for a range of marketing applications. Thanks to the Bitly API, it can seamlessly integrate with nearly every social media platform and digital marketing tool, unlocking time-saving convenience and powerful new features.
If you’re looking for a link management solution that is both user-friendly and feature-rich, Bitly is a great choice! Best of all, Bitly offers a completely free plan that lets you try out the platform’s basic features with no commitment required.
Key features:
- Create short URLs with the click of a button
- Customize short URLs with a branded or custom domain name
- Advanced link performance analytics allow you to track link engagement in real-time
- Generate QR Codes
- Create link-in-bio pages to organize all of your most important links
Pricing:
Bitly offers four pricing plans:
- Free
- Core: $8/month
- Growth: $29/month
- Premium: $199/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
2. Rebrandly
Rebrandly is a link management platform that offers features like URL shortening, branded links, link performance analytics, and link retargeting. With Rebrandly, you can also create custom reports on your URLs’ performance.
Rebrandly provides all of the tools needed for basic link management and is a fine option for anyone looking for a user-friendly option.
Key features:
- 10,000+ branded links per month (with an Enterprise plan)
- Link performance analytics and custom reports
- Link retargeting and traffic routing to send people to the pages that have the best chance of converting them
- UTM builder that lets you add snippets of code to custom URLs
Pricing:
Rebrandly offers five pricing plans:
- Free
- Lite: $13/month
- Essentials: $32/month
- Professional: $99/month
- Enterprise: $625/month
3. TinyURL
TinyURL was one of the first URL shorteners on the scene and is still a viable option for anyone that needs to create short links. With TinyURL, you can turn any link into a short or branded link with just a few clicks.
TinyURL also provides basic link-tracking features, allowing you to view the number of clicks on your shortened links. While TinyURL may not have advanced link management platform features, it is still a worthwhile solution for anyone who just needs the basics.
Key features:
- URL shortening and branded links
- Basic click tracking features
- Budget-friendly pricing
- Tools for creating custom domains
Pricing:
TinyURL offers three pricing plans:
- Free
- Pro: $9.99/month
- Bulk 100K: starting at $99/month
4. LinkTrackr
LinkTrackr is an excellent tool for tracking performance. You can monitor metrics like impressions, click-through rates, and conversions to evaluate campaigns and achieve visibility into which links deliver the best results.
LinkTrackr also provides a tool for creating branded links and link-cloaking features—useful for affiliate marketers who need to mask a destination website’s URL.
Key features:
- Detailed and comprehensive link tracking
- Link cloaking to help affiliate marketers protect their commissions
- Branded links
- Split testing for multiple landing pages/destinations of a single link
Pricing:
LinkTrackr offers four pricing plans:
- Basic: $7/month
- Pro: $17/month
- Hyper: $27/month
- Extreme: $47/month
5. Linktree
Linktree is a tool that focuses specifically on helping businesses and content creators make attractive and functional link-in-bio pages. With Linktree’s user-friendly interface, creating a single page to organize all of your most important links can be done in just a few minutes.
Linktree also offers a range of customization options, enabling you to create a link-in-bio page that perfectly reflects your brand identity.
Key features:
- Organization of multiple links into a single link-in-bio page
- Branding and customization options for link-in-bio pages
- Basic link-tracking features
Pricing:
Linktree offers four pricing plans:
- Free
- Starter: $5/month
- Pro: $9/month
- Premium: $24/month
6. RocketLink
RocketLink is a tool that offers numerous link management features, including short and custom URLs, link retargeting, and advanced tracking and analytics. They also have call-to-action overlays and personalized pop-ups from a single, user-friendly dashboard.
RocketLink is certainly a feature-rich link management platform, and while its pricing is noticeably steeper than comparable platforms like Bitly, it’s a good option for anyone who needs advanced capabilities.
Key features:
- Short and branded links
- Advanced performance tracking
- Link retargeting
- Social media integrations that simplify link sharing across various platforms
Pricing:
RocketLink offers three pricing plans:
- Liftoff: $19/month
- Space: $29/month
- Galaxy: $69/month
7. Linkly
Linkly is an easy-to-use platform that offers basic link management features like URL shortening, custom links, retargeting, and tracking.
While Linkly’s link-tracking features are somewhat limited compared to more advanced platforms, they provide attractive reports that tell you the number of clicks a link receives and data on the country, device, ISP, destination, and traffic referrer.
Linkly also lets you customize social media previews to help you design visually appealing posts.
Key features:
- Short and custom URLs
- Retargeting
- Basic link tracking and analytics
Pricing:
Linkly offers two pricing plans:
- Basic: Free
- Plus: $29/month
Optimize and track your links effortlessly with Bitly
The right link management platform can provide a wealth of benefits to digital marketers, helping them turn their links into optimized marketing tools and track their performance for invaluable insights.
If you’re looking for a single service that offers all of the features you need to effortlessly optimize your links and track their performance, try Bitly!
With Bitly, you can create short and custom URLs with the push of a button, share them anywhere, and track their results in real time—all while enjoying numerous other helpful features like QR Code generation, Link-in-bio pages, and many more.
Sign up for Bitly today to get started creating links that drive results!