I like Bitly because it has a pretty interface and a login for all of the links you create. You should add this script in your page header, but not within the basic Analytics tracking code snippet.
Export your data to Excel, text, PDF or XML for paid accounts. Instead, they create a “tracking link” that will act as a redirect to the actual landing page or website URL. With this level of visual reporting you can view a complete account overview of all your statistics, or drill down into each individual link to see when it got the most clicks, and where your traffic is coming from.
For specific examples about email, PDF, social media links, and more see Part II. Sign In to Google Tag Manager Create a Account Name the Container for your site Accept the Terms & Conditions Copy & Paste the GTM code block at the start of the
tag on your site Setup the Link Tracker Add a tag to capture all the link clicks Create a macro to save the anchor text Add a tag to fire off the Google Analytics Event Add a rule to capture only the clicks on external links Save a version and publish 1. ClickMeter is a link tracking tool that focuses on tracking links for your website so that you can monitor relevant clicks. When you schedule a link Tweet via Hootsuite, you can shorten the link to an owl.ly link. owl.ly/0a0b0c0 Google: As always, Google has something for you too. The Link Tracking Configuration properties enable you to specify Adobe Analytics events and variables to track when link clicks occur.The downside of this approach, however, is that if a user visits your shortened domain without a directory path on the end, they will be directed to a Bitly branded page. Facebook automatically detects the link and parses the page description and an image from the original page. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. A feature that a lot of bloggers would die to get their hands on. You can also find out how many clicks your particular bit.ly link got compared to the total clicks on the long link.
This is key to search engine optimization as it ensures that search engine spiders won't think the shortener URL is the "real" URL to the page. Even if you currently do not intend to track specific creatives or targeting, it may be worthwhile to allow space for it. To enable outbound link tracking, you need to add a little javascript to your website, and add a little code with each outgoing link that you want to track. At that time, Google will completely disable the URL shortener and all associated data will be lost. Click Download to export and save this list of contacts, or click each contact to view their activity for this campaign. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. It appears to be written in something like base64. Every access requires more requests (at least one more DNS lookup, though it may be cached, and one more HTTP/HTTPS request), thereby increasing latency, the time taken to access the page, and also the risk of failure, since the shortening service may become unavailable.