With all the links being shared on social media communities like Twitter and Facebook, choosing the right link shortener is essential for maximizing your SEO efforts. The single most important factor is that the link shortening service does a 301 Redirect so that the shortened link will pass on the link juice to the destination website. In this post, I will profile the top 5 most popular URL shortening services that are also SEO-friendly.

The Top 5 URL Link Shorteners: 

1. Bit.ly

   This is probably the hottest link shortener at the moment. It shortens your URLs, has a nice sidebar for sharing on Twitter and it also tracks each click on your shortened URL if you're interested in social media analytics. It fully supports 301 Redirects so it is SEO friendly.

2. TinyURL

   This is one of the original link shortening services. It doesn't have any tracking features like bit.ly, but it supports 301 redirects, has a unique toolbar that integrates in your browser and allows you to quickly shorten URLs. One advantage it does have is custom URL aliases, which allow you to give a custom name to your shortened link.

3. Su.pr

   This is a new link shortening services from massive social media network StumbleUpon. It offers many great features including post scheduling on Facebook/Twitter, extensive statistics on the clicks you receive and what makes it unique, it promotes your website by automatically stumbling your page with each click on the shortened URL. This can be a huge promotional tool, since StumbleUpon's community of 8 million members is legendary for providing massive influxes of traffic form the service. Initially, there was some controversy with this service because it used SEO unfriendly 302 Redirects, but they have since changed to 301 Redirects so Stumble away!

4. Tr.im

   This service offers very short URLs along with detailed statistics and integration with Twitter clients. It also offers 301 Redirects so it is 100% search engine friendly. If you want very short and slick looking URLs then Tr.im is an excellent option.

5. Cli.gs

   This is one of the fastest growing link shortening services because it offers one of the best combination of features. It has real-time analytics, geo-targeted destination URLs and a number of great tools to integrate it with Gmail, Wordpress, Twitterfeed and Firefox.