Vanity URLs: Definition, Uses, and 3-Minute Setup Guide

A vanity URL turns this:

advanced.npdigital.com/consulting-page/promotions/special-discount-2025/

Into this:

neilpatel.com/consulting

It’s a 301 redirect from a short, memorable URL to a longer one. Vanity URLs have a range of uses, and they’re easy to set up when you know how. 

However, there’s a fair bit of misinformation floating about, so it’s equally important to know when not to use them. 

What Is a Vanity URL?

A vanity URL is a concise, easy-to-remember URL that redirects to a longer URL. The process is invisible to the page visitor and relies on a 301 redirect. 

Brands use vanity URLs for several reasons, but they’re very common in print advertising. They’re tools to help customers remember an URL, which they can type or tap into their browsers later. 

Vanity URLs redirect to true URLs, which are usually long (and therefore easy to forget) or have complex parameters for tracking. 

Why Don’t Web Admins Use Vanity URLs as Original URLs?

You might be wondering why site admins don’t just replace original URLs with vanity URLs. You can still track visitors, right? 

There are two main reasons why vanity URLs don’t work as “true” URLs. First, they often include multiple tracking parameters, making them long and difficult to recall. Second, real URLs may include structural elements that are important for a site’s internal and SEO hierarchy. 

For example, say you’re running a summer sale for an ecommerce site. 

Your vanity URL is:

snazzyclothes.com/summersale

It’s a good choice. Simple and easy to remember.

It redirects to: 

snazzyclothes.com/sales/summer?utm_source=magazinearticle&utm_medium=print

The target URL includes a subdirectory (/sales) and multiple UTM parameters that allow the site admin to track the traffic source in their analytics software.

Can You Reuse Vanity URLs?

In short, yes. You can reuse vanity URLs. However, you need to be careful. 

For example, imagine you want to use this vanity URL in print ads:

snazzyclothes.com/sale 

And your intention is to redirect it to the following URLs at different times of the year:

snazzyclothes.com//sales/2025/spring

snazzyclothes.com/sales/2025/summer

snazzyclothes.com/sales/2025/autumn

snazzyclothes.com/sales/2025/winter

All you would have to do is modify the 301 redirect before each sale period. Because the vanity URL will be used in print media, and not online, it’s unlikely to cause any SEO issues or loss of link equity. 

However, it may result in tracking problems because you won’t know which ads customers are picking up the URL from. In addition, visitors may be confused if they’re expecting to land on old pages.

The safer approach is not to change vanity URLs once they’re set up. In this case, you could use something like snazzyclothes.com/winter2025 instead. 

That said, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with reusing vanity URLs. If you’re unlikely to lose link juice to a page, create tracking problems, or confuse visitors, there’s no reason to hold back. 

What Is Not a Vanity URL?

There’s a surprising amount of misinformation about vanity URLs on the web, and they’re often confused with similar types of URLs. Let’s clear up some of that confusion. 

Vanity URLs are not: 

• Display URLs: This may be the most common misunderstanding. Imagine you see the anchor text neilpatel.com in an email. You click on it and go to neilpatel.com?utm_source=email. In this case, the displayed anchor text isn’t a vanity URL. It just doesn’t match the link destination. The same is true for URLs acting as anchor text in ads. 

In this post, default.com (which links to a longer URL filled with tracking parameters) is a display URL, not a vanity URL.

• Personal brand domains: These are domains that include an individual’s name like NeilPatel.com. I might be on an ego trip, but I’m not using a vanity URL! 
• Shortened URLs: Shortened URLs like https://bit.ly/4151r4X aren’t true vanity URLs. They’re designed to take up less space on platforms like X or track clicks via a third-party tool like bit.ly. 

In this post, the bit.ly URL is a shortened URL, not a vanity URL. 

• Ranking boosters: Google indexes “true” URLs, not vanity URLs. Despite SEO guidance to the contrary online, using a vanity URL that includes relevant keywords won’t impact your rankings, positively or negatively. 
• Vanity domains: These are best understood as a subset of vanity URLs. They’re redirects from a separate domain URL to another one, like ubersuggest.com to neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/. 

Vanity URL Best Practices: Clear, Concise, Memorable

Good vanity URLs look simple on the surface. But a lot of thought goes into them. There are also a few common mistakes to watch out for. 

Follow the best practices below when picking a vanity URL:

• Keep it clear: Ask the question, “Does this tell the viewer where the link will take them?”
• Keep it concise: Under twenty characters is a good rule of thumb for a vanity URL. Anything above that and you’re increasing the risk that people will forget it. 
• Keep it memorable: Memorability is the main purpose of a vanity URL. If appropriate, make the URL stand out by using a striking word or phrase, while keeping it short and clear. An example might be neilpatel.com/megaoffer or neilpatel.com/myreward. 
• Give special characters a miss: Special characters like “&,” “$,” “-,” and so on make domains confusing and harder to recall. Dashes are the biggest ones to watch out for (and avoid). 
• Don’t capitalize: Capitalizing the individual words of an URL can make it easier to read in print. Consider, for example, NeilPatel.com/SpecialOffer compared to neilpatel.com/specialoffer. However, as Google’s John Mueller has highlighted, URLs are case sensitive. To prevent issues from arising, it’s easier to stick to lowercase. The exception to this is if you normally use title case in your URLs.
• …with the exception of domains: If you’re only redirecting a domain to another domain or URL, feel free to capitalize. The domain name (or root domain) in an URL isn’t case-sensitive. Both NeilPatel.com and neilpatel.com will take you to the same place. 

Vanity URL Uses and Examples

Print Ads

Print media is by far the most prominent use case for vanity URLs. When a vanity URL is published in print, there will often be a significant delay between when it’s read and when a visitor types or taps it into their browser. Because of this, companies must make it memorable and concise. 

By directing a vanity URL to a longer URL with tracking parameters, companies can also see exactly where visitors are coming from and which ads are performing well. This is especially useful for direct response copy and discount-based promotions. 

An URL promoting a Christmas discount, like neilpatel.com/christmas, for example, is probably concise enough to be used on a highway billboard. Often, you’ll also see print ads telling customers to use a specific discount code, like neilpatel.com/discount24, to track the effectiveness of specific offers. 

UTM Tags

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are tags that are added to an URL. They let site admins track where traffic is coming from and which campaigns that traffic is associated with. They’re particularly popular with GA4 users. 

Here’s an example: 

neilpatel.com/ubersuggest?utm_source=january-print-ads&utm_medium=magazine&utm_campaign=spring-sale

Here’s what the different parameters mean:

• utm_source=january-print-ads identifies traffic as coming from January print ads
• utm_medium=email identifies the medium as magazines
• utm_campaign=spring-sale identifies the broader campaign that the promotion is part of

With this information, I can filter by source, medium, and campaign in GA4.

However, as you can see, this URL is exceptionally long. Readers encountering it in a magazine will probably struggle to copy it letter-by-letter into a browser, let alone remember it. Hence the need for a vanity URL. 

Online Media

Sometimes, companies anticipate word-of-mouth referrals or direct traffic. In these cases, they may display a vanity URL instead of a display URL in online media like ads and newsletters. 

For example, a company may use the vanity URL example.com/discount2025 in a promotional email to make it easy for readers to remember it without having to revisit the link. 

There are also some ad platforms that don’t support display URLs, and a vanity URL may be used in these cases. However, this is rare nowadays. 

How to Set Up a Vanity URL in 3 Minutes or Less

1. Check Your Vanity URL Isn’t Already in Use

First, pick a vanity URL for your real URL. Remember to keep it clear, concise, and memorable. 

Once you’ve done that, type it into your browser to check that it’s not already in use on your website. 

2. Set Up a 301 Redirect 

A simple 301 redirect is all that’s needed to get a vanity URL up and running. 

Here’s a code snippet to add to the top of your .htaccess file (usually found in the public_html root directory) if your server runs on Apache:

Redirect 301 /old-page https://example.com/new-page

If you wanted to redirect neilpatel.com/christmas to neilpatel.com/discounts/christmasoffer?utm_source=email, your code would look like this:

Redirect 301 /christmas https://neilpatel.com/discounts/christmasoffer?utm_source=email

If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast plugin is your best bet. If your host offers cPanel you can also use the Redirect interface. 

3. Test the Vanity URL

Once you’ve set up your vanity URL, run a quick test to check it’s working. Start by typing it into your own browser. 

If that works OK, run it through a tool like Redirect Checker, which will test it on different browsers. 

Finally, if you’re using UTM parameters, double-check that they are correct and that your session has registered in your analytics platform. 

Conclusion

There’s a lot of poor information about vanity URLs. 

They’re often confused with display URLs, personal brand domains, and shortened URLs. 

Knowing when to use vanity URLs is half the battle. A lot of the time, they’re not needed. A simple display URL or URL shortening tool (many of which are now built into social media platforms) will do the trick.

At other times, especially when advertising in print media, they’re a powerful tool. 

For those times, keep the simple motto I mentioned earlier in mind:

Clear, concise, memorable.