9 Practical Reasons to Use Vanity URL’s Right Now

Most publishers brand their domain, their merch, and their podcast. Then they paste raw affiliate URLs into social posts and wonder why click-through stays flat. The data tells a different story. A vanity URL is one of the cheapest infrastructure upgrades you can make, and almost nobody treats it that way.

I’ve been running affiliate sites for over nine years. At Lasso, we see the same pattern across operators building at scale: the links that earn trust look like they belong to your site. Vanity URLs, sometimes called branded links or custom short URLs, are how you get there without rebuilding your entire stack.

You can use them online and offline. Offline materials become trackable entry points. Email links look cleaner and are less likely to land in spam folders. On social platforms, branded links get more clicks than long tracking strings. Drop one in a comment thread and you turn a passive reader into an active visitor. And no, this is not some SEO sorcery that takes a developer. You can set one up in minutes.

Here are nine practical reasons to start using vanity URLs right now.

Updated 2026.

1What Is a Vanity URL?

A vanity URL is a custom web address that helps users find and remember a specific page on your site. Every time you share a link on social media, LinkedIn, a press release, or anywhere else, you get another chance to put your brand in front of someone.

Vanity URLs should be easy to remember and share. They are the natural next step after shortening. A URL shortener turns long, hieroglyphic-looking links into something shareable. Here is an unshortened, non-vanity link:

https://fundrise.com/start-investing/starter-plan?utm_campaign=impactradius&irgwc=1&utm_medium=cpa&utm_source=listenmoneymatters&clickid=S8D1LkUMtxyOT6LwUx0Mo3cgUki1V80RUQe7So0&requireEmail=true

And here it is after being spruced up:

https://www.yourwebsite.com/fundrise/

Lasso lets you add a custom shortcode to your content in the WordPress editor.

Shortened URLs vs. Vanity URLs vs. Cloaked URLs

Are these terms just different ways of saying the same thing? No.

• A shortened URL is just a URL that has been made shorter than the original, but it will still direct to the requested page. A shortened URL can be a vanity URL, but not every shortened URL is a vanity URL.

• A cloaked URL is a URL that hides the actual domain name of a site from the URL field in a web browser in favor of a different name.

Lasso can cloak links to make them look like a URL from your site. Or not. Some affiliate programs, Amazon’s included, forbid cloaked links. Lasso gives you the option of not linking to the cloaked version of a URL so you do not violate the TOS of any program that does not allow them. For a deeper look at how cloaking works and when to use it, see our guide on link cloaking.

Vanity URL Examples

Once you know what to look for, you will spot vanity URLs everywhere. The Guardian’s current vanity URL on Instagram takes you to its Linktr.ee page. Linktr.ee is a tool to optimize Instagram traffic. A single bio link can house all the content the company wants to send its followers.

The current Uniqlo vanity URL on Instagram takes you to the webpage for the clothing store’s collaboration between singer Billie Eilish and Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami.

Whatever your blog or podcast is about, you are likely facing a ton of competition. As a little experiment, I searched for an obscure blog topic: “blogs about spider plants.” Pretty vague, right? The search came back with 31,600,000 results. A vanity URL will not solve competition by itself, but it helps set you apart from operators still sharing raw network links.

21. Better SEO Results

Like it or not, we live and die by SEO. Getting it right is a crucial factor in the success of your online endeavor. When you include a keyword in the URL slug of your links, it boosts your SEO, and your brand will be linked to the keyword because a search engine like Google searches through URLs looking for keywords.

32. More Memorable

Unshortened links are clunky and ugly to look at. That is why using a URL shortener is essential. A short URL is cleaner but still difficult to remember. That is when vanity plays a role. Vanity URL plus short URL equals clean and memorable.

43. Looks Less Suspicious

One of the dangers of the internet is clicking the wrong link. Randomly clicking links or going to unknown websites on your computer, phone, or even Smart TV can put you at risk of covertly downloaded software intended to damage or disable your devices. A shortened, vanity URL makes your branded links look more trustworthy, which means people will be more willing to click on them.

54. Easier To Share

You can be a genius at digital marketing, but the cheapest and best marketing is word of mouth. Let your readers, listeners, and customers do the work for you.

People are 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend.

Because vanity URLs contain words rather than a random string of numbers, people can share them through literal word of mouth. For channel-by-channel placement tactics, see our guide on how to promote affiliate links.

65. Better Fit for Print

I love swag. When I go to a conference, I bring a tote bag to haul away everything I can. And it is not just me. People love free stuff. Keychains, water bottles, coffee mugs, pens, earbuds, you name it. No matter how small your swag, your web address and any vanity URLs you want to include will fit.

76. Shows You Are a Serious Professional

Not everyone uses vanity URLs or knows what they are, including the general public. But enough companies are using them that people recognize them, even if they do not know what they are called. If you are not using one, it makes your brand look sloppy and unprofessional.

87. Get It While You Can

Anyone can buy a vanity URL just as anyone can buy a domain name. Remember when you came up with your super cool vanity domain and found out someone else already owned it? The same thing can happen with your dream vanity URLs. Even if you do not have immediate plans to use a specific URL, if it is an obvious future choice, act now before someone else does.

98. Monitor Traffic

If you are spending money to run ads, you want to get the most bang for your buck. If you are running ads on more than one site, you want to know which one is driving the most traffic to your webpage. Lasso creates trackable vanity URLs, so you know precisely where to spend your marketing dollars. You can use one link on one platform and a different one on another to measure performance. Our guide on click tracking covers how to instrument those clicks across your stack.

109. Stay on Brand

Consistency is essential for growing your brand. Using a vanity URL helps maintain it across various platforms.

11How to Choose a Vanity URL

The shorter, the better. The longer you make it, the harder it is to remember and type into a search query. Now is not the time to flaunt your knowledge of obscure words. Avoid using slashes and dashes if possible. Domains that contain them are harder to remember. Capitalize each word to distinguish one from the other. Which is easier to read, candicemelliott.com or CandiceMElliott.com?

12How to Create a Vanity URL

The process of creating your vanity URL is simple.

• Choose your hosting service. You can DIY this whole thing, but it is faster to use a service like Bitly.

• Create a vanity URL. Keep it short and sweet, no more than ten characters, and it should look similar to your domain name.

• Buy it. And hope no one got there first. Ideally, you will buy from the same host you use for your website.

• Shorten the URL. If you use Bitly for short links, you can go to the advanced option under your account and choose the “custom short domain” option. It is where you enter the vanity URL. Most other sites work the same.

• Find your DNS settings. This page explains how. If you are still having trouble, you can contact the domain registrar.

• Choose the domain. Go to Bit.ly or whatever service you use and select the newly shortened version.

13How to Use Vanity URLs

Partner wisely. Pair your vanity URL with your SEO strategy. The two together can be very powerful. Do not overdo it. Yes, vanity URLs can help your site grow, but do not toss them around like Mardi Gras beads. Use them where they will have an impact.

If you have a link already performing well, you do not need to replace it with a vanity URL.

Be clear. Let people know where your link is taking them by making it obvious. If it has the name of your site followed by “free money” and it takes them to your merch page, people will be pissed and not trust you.

14Where to Start

There are a million things you could be doing right now to improve traffic to your site, and some might work. But many are very time consuming, and you are already busy running your website and possibly still working your regular job. You have to focus on what you can efficiently do that gets real results. Vanity URLs are one of those moves.

If you already have pages ranking, start with what is unmonetized. Run an Opportunities scan on URLs that already get traffic. Most operators find product mentions sitting in posts with no affiliate link attached.

See how Lasso fits your stack. Get started with Lasso and turn the links you already have into branded, trackable placements that earn trust and get more clicks.

Jamie I.F.

Lasso Team

Jamie heads up marketing at Lasso, runs a portfolio of niche sites, and tweets a lot about affiliate marketing and SEO.