[General Review] What’s a Vanity URL & Vanity Domain?

What Is Vanity URL?

The main function of the vanity URL is to help simplify a complicated URL and its underlying purpose is to help the potential visitors remember the target page or URL link. In general, a vanity URL simplifies and shorten URLs with complicated structures to help people remember, access, and share your business easily.

Vanity URLs contain a domain name that features the brand or a relevant keyword for your business. Those URLs can be used in multiple situations including emails, social media, as well as offline marketing activities like print publications.

About URL

URL, Uniform Resource Locator, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. URL is colloquially termed a web address; it occurs mostly to reference web pages (HTTP), but are also used for file transfer (FTP), email (mailto), database access (JDBC), and other applications.

Most web browsers display the URL of a web page above the page in an address bar. Typically, a URL is formed as http://www.example.com/index.html, which indicates a protocol (HTTP), a hostname (www.example.com), as well as a file name (index.html).

Vanity URL Example

Just as mentioned above, vanity URLs are usually used in social media. Below is an example of a vanity link on Twitter.

Vanity URL vs Vanity Domain

What’s the difference between vanity URL and vanity domain? We have defined the meaning of vanity URL in the above and let’s see what is the vanity domain.

What Is a Vanity Domain?

In the domain name system (DNS), a vanity domain is a domain name that aims to express the individuality of the person on whose behalf it is registered. It is contrasted with domain names that resolve to an organization or a service that the organization offers.

Several definitions of vanity domain:

• A subdomain of an ISP’s domain that is aliased to an individual user account.
• An Internet domain, particularly in the .com or .org top-level domains (TLD), apparently created for no reason other than boosting the creator’s ego.
• The domain that you register for the sole purpose of having your own domain so you can have an easily remembered URL and email address.

Vanity Domain Example

Vanity domain https://www.minitool.shadowmaker.com/ will forward to original domain https://www.minitool.com/. 

Vanity Domain vs Vanity URL

A vanity domain is the same concept as a vanity URL except for the fact that the whole vanity domain forwards to the original domain. Usually, vanity domains are used for tracking purposes when it comes to traditional marketing collateral or efforts like video or radio ads and print.

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How to Create a Vanity URL?

It is of great easiness to create a vanity URL. Before creating a vanity URL, you should know the three parts that consist of a vanity URL: domain, TLD, and URL slug. For example, the 3 parts of “example.chapter1/page1” are “example”, “chapter1”, and “page1” respectively.

Most social media websites have preinstalled vanity URL shorteners, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Thus, if you directly put links on those sites, they will automatically turn the long links into short vanity URLs.

Yet, if you would like to create your own brand-related special vanity URL, you can follow the below steps.

Firstly, Select a Domain Name

You should pick up a domain name that reflects your business and reminds readers of you. You can rely on some services that can help you do that, such as Bit.ly.

Secondly, Choose a TLD

You have to select a relevant top-level domain like .news, .blog, and .store.

Thirdly, Create a URL Slug (Keyword)

After deciding the branded domain name and TLD, now, it’s time to create your whole vanity URLs by adding URL slugs to the end of your domain name + TLD.

Also read: 2 Solutions to Shorten YouTube URL

Vanity URL FAQ