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Links

Your Instagram bio has room for exactly one link. A YouTube description gets skimmed. A podcast host has to read your address out loud. In all three situations you want something short, easy to remember, and on your own domain (your site's address): emilio.co/youtube rather than youtube.com/@emilioabril?sub_confirmation=1.

That is what links are for. You choose a short address on your domain, you choose where it leads, and TinyPages sends every visitor there. If the destination changes one day, you edit the link and everything you already published keeps working.

Note

Creating and editing links requires a Pro plan. Deleting one is always possible. If your subscription ends, the links you created keep working on your free TinyPages address, like emilio.tinypages.co/youtube. Your custom domain, however, is removed when the subscription ends, so an address like emilio.co/youtube stops working.

  1. Go to Web pages in your dashboard and open the Links tab.
  2. Click Create link.
  3. In Link, type the part that comes after your domain, for example youtube. Your domain is already shown in front of the field.
  4. In Destination, paste the full address of the page where you want to send people, for example your sales page or your sign-up page, starting with https://.
  5. In Description, you can add a short note so you recognize the link in your list, for example Free session waitlist. It is optional and only for you: your visitors never see it.
  6. Confirm with Create link. It works right away.

For example, for your Instagram bio: create the link ig and, in Destination, paste the address of your sales page or your sign-up page. Then paste emilio.co/ig into your Instagram bio. People who tap it land on that page. Like every link, it needs a Pro plan.

The description shows in small text under the link in your list, so a page of short addresses stays easy to read at a glance. Leave it empty and nothing shows.

Back in the list, move your mouse over a link and a copy icon appears next to it. One click puts the full address in your clipboard, with https:// and your domain, ready to paste into a bio or a video description.

Move your mouse over a link and a small menu appears at the end of the row, on the right.

Edit reopens the same form. Changing the destination is the whole point of a short link: the address you published everywhere stays exactly as it is, and from that moment on everyone who follows it lands on the new destination. You have nothing to correct in your bio or your old videos.

Delete asks for a second click to confirm, because there is no undo. Once the link is removed, the address no longer leads to your destination: anyone who follows it lands on your home page instead. Deleting works even without a Pro plan, so you are never stuck with a link you no longer want.

Keep the addresses of your old site​

When you move your site to TinyPages, your old pages had addresses of their own, like emilio.co/guides/excel or emilio.co/cases/software.html. Google still lists them, and people still share them. Unless something sends them on to your new pages, visitors who follow them land on an error page.

A link can recreate each of those addresses. In Link, type the old address as it was, slashes included: guides/excel, or cases/software.html. In Destination, paste the address of the new page on TinyPages. Repeat for each old page that still gets visits.

An address can have up to five levels separated by /. A dot (as in .html or .php) is only accepted in the last part of an address that contains at least one /: cases/software.html works, but an address without a /, like about.html, can't be recreated.

Only links can use an address with several levels. If no link matches such an address, the visitor sees your site's "page not found" message rather than your home page.

What gets accepted, what gets refused​

The address accepts lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, with a / between levels. You can type it freely: when you leave the field, TinyPages tidies it up for you, so Black Friday becomes black-friday and Guides/Excel becomes guides/excel.

The destination has to be a full address starting with http:// or https://. So youtube.com/@me is refused, while https://youtube.com/@me goes through.

Three more cases where TinyPages stops you:

  • The address is already taken by one of your web pages or by another of your links. Each address leads to a single place.
  • The address is one TinyPages keeps for itself: blog, forms, students, login, checkout, system and unsubscribe. The same goes for an address that starts with one of them, like blog/my-article.
  • The link points at itself, which would send your visitors round in circles.

And one rule you will rarely meet: if a web page and a link ever share the same address, the page is what your visitors see.

Follow your clicks​

The Clicks column counts everyone who took the link. Click on the number and your visit stats open, already filtered on that link. You see where people came from (Instagram, YouTube, your newsletter), which country they were in, and whether they were on a phone or a computer.

Two things to know so the numbers don't surprise you:

  • When someone pastes your link into WhatsApp, Slack or X, those apps fetch the page to build a preview card. Those previews are not counted, only real visitors are.
  • Each counter belongs to the address it was collected on. Change a link's address and its counter starts again from zero; the clicks already counted stay with the old address. Same thing if you delete a link and later create a new one on the same address: it starts clean rather than inheriting clicks that were never meant for it.

The most useful habit is to give every place you publish its own link, even when they all lead to the same destination. /yt in your video descriptions, /ig in your Instagram bio, leading to your page, /news in your emails.

Three links, three counters, and you can tell at a glance which channel is actually bringing people in. It is also the one method that holds up when a browser or an app hides where the visitor came from, which happens more and more often.

Some statistics tools read a short code added at the end of an address, like ?utm_source=newsletter, to know where a visitor came from. This code is called a UTM parameter.

Anything you add at the end of a short link is passed along to the destination. Publish emilio.co/webinar?utm_source=newsletter and your visitor lands on the destination with ?utm_source=newsletter still attached, so the tool you use on the destination site can see where the visit came from.

If the destination address already contains that same parameter, its own value is the one kept.

Those parameters are also recorded in your own visit stats. Add ?utm_source=newsletter in an email and ?utm_source=instagram in your Instagram bio, and you can compare the two from TinyPages, without opening the tool on the destination site.

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