How to Shorten Links Yourself
Shortening website links is a good way to reduce overly long, bloated, clunky-looking text on URLs and to avoid having to remember how to type them up. There are several ways that you can shorten them yourself.
First: Find a domain name
A good domain name is one that has no more than seven characters; in addition, it is a good idea to create one that sounds like a recognizable abbreviation of the full name. One tool that does this is Domianr; it can help you find available extensions. Do not forget to use a 301 redirect to send the short domain to the actual site.
Second: Doing it yourself
There are several services that offer URL shorteners that automatically change your URLs to short links when they are tweeted from certain clients. However, some of these services are a bit expensive. If you do not have the money to spend on a service such as this, you can still do it yourself. YourIs has some open source scripts with standard features to create public links. Another way to do this is to install WordPress and Pretty Link on your servers on your short domain’s root. Pretty Link is also open source, but it offers a relatively inexpensive pro version with more options.
Third: Other options
Whenever you tweet a link through Twitter, it is automatically shortened to fit in its 140 word limit. However, a Twitter link is only valid in Twitter; unless you use that as your main form of communication, you may need one of the other options.