Short link best practices for teams.

By the 1Namecard team

Last updated 15 October 2026

7 min read

In short

Put short links on a domain you own, give each placement a short readable key, use a temporary redirect code unless a move is final, and never point an old key at a new destination. Decide before printing what an expired code should show, and keep every link to a single redirect.

Put your short links on a domain you control.

A short link is a promise printed on paper. It has to keep working after the campaign, after the agency changes and after you switch tools. Three things follow from that.

Trust. People see the address before they tap or scan. go.yourcompany.com/rollup looks like yours. A string on an unfamiliar domain looks like something to avoid.
Deliverability. Some mail filters treat well-known public shortener domains with suspicion, because spammers use them too. A domain of your own builds its own reputation, so look after it, and ask your mail administrator how your filters behave.
Ownership. A subdomain that points to your provider with a CNAME record is yours. If you change provider, you repoint one DNS record and every printed code keeps working. On a provider's own domain, you lose them all.

Use a subdomain such as go or link, not your main domain, so the short links cannot disturb your website. Keep the record for as long as anything printed uses it, which can be years.

Choose keys that people can read aloud.

The key is the part after the slash. Someone will read it out over the phone, type it from a poster or copy it from a printed catalogue. A random string works for a scan and fails for everything else.

Keys that work and keys that do not
Key	Verdict	Why
`expo27-rollup`	Good	Says the show and the placement, easy to say, easy to type
`demo`	Good	One short word that people remember
`x7qk2`	Poor	Meaningless, easy to mistype, nothing to find in a report
`lo0l`	Poor	The letter l, the digit 1, the letter o and the digit 0 look alike in many typefaces
`Promo_2027_FINAL`	Poor	Capitals and underscores are not allowed in 1Namecard, and are a bad habit anywhere

A rule of thumb is to stay under about 15 characters, use only lower case letters, digits and hyphens, and avoid any character pair that is easy to confuse. 1Namecard accepts 2 to 40 lower case letters, digits and hyphens, and a key cannot match a card slug. For a naming scheme, build the key from the show and the placement, then a variant if you are testing: expo27-leaflet-a. The same words then work in your reports. The UTM guide shows how to match them to your tags.

Pick the right redirect status code.

A redirect answers with a number that tells browsers whether the move is temporary and whether to remember it. RFC 9110, the HTTP standard, defines four of them.

The four redirect codes and when to use each
Code	Meaning	Browsers may cache it	Use it when
301	Moved permanently	Yes, by default	A page has moved for good and the old address should never be used again
302	Found, a temporary redirect	Not by default	An older temporary code, fine if you cannot choose 307
307	Temporary redirect, method kept	Not by default	The default for printed codes: you may change the target later
308	Permanent redirect, method kept	Yes, by default	A final move where the request method must survive

The cache is the point. Once a browser has stored a permanent redirect, it can skip your server and go straight to the old target on later visits. Change the target and some visitors will still land on the previous page. For anything printed, use a temporary code, so the target stays editable. Reserve 301 and 308 for a move you will never reverse.

Never reuse a key for a different destination.

A printed code outlives its campaign. A flyer lies in a drawer for a year, a poster hangs in a corridor, a business card sits in a wallet. If last year's offer key now opens this year's offer, three things go wrong.

Caution: A visitor lands on a page that has nothing to do with the paper they scanned.
Caution: Your reports mix two campaigns under one name.
Caution: A browser that cached a permanent redirect keeps sending people to the old place.

Edit the target when you are correcting the same offer. Create a new key when the purpose changes. Do not rename a key that is in print: in 1Namecard the click history follows the renamed key, but the paper does not.

Decide what an old printed code shows.

Every code on paper will be scanned after you stopped caring. Make that moment useful.

What an old code shows, with and without a plan
Situation	No plan	With a plan
Show offer, one month after the show	A dead page or a 404	Expiry date set, fallback to a permanent contact page
Link disabled by mistake	A 404 and an annoyed prospect	Fallback to the main product page
Staff left the company	A card that points nowhere	Target moved to a team address

Set an expiry date on every campaign link, and a fallback that always works. The fallback should be an evergreen page, such as your contact page, not another campaign.

Route by device and set the preview.

One printed code can serve everyone. A visitor on an iPhone can go to the App Store, a visitor on Android to Google Play and everyone else to a web page. Without it you print two codes, or one code and a page full of buttons. Test each route on a real handset before it goes to print.

A short link pasted into a chat, a post or an e-mail shows a preview built from a title, a description and an image. Set all three yourself. The image should be 1200 by 630 pixels, the size most platforms recommend. A bare short link with no preview looks like spam.

Decide whether to pass the query string on. If a visitor arrives with ?utm_campaign=newsletter, passing it on forwards it to the target, so your analytics sees it. In 1Namecard, if both the visitor and the target carry the same parameter, the visitor's value wins. Turn it on only when the target does something with the parameters.

Keep the counts honest, and the list clean.

Many requests to a short link are not people. Link-preview crawlers fetch it when someone pastes it into a chat. Mail security scanners open every link in a message before it reaches the inbox. Browsers prefetch pages. Some QR scanner apps check the destination first. Together they can inflate a count, most of all on a link in an e-mail. Filter them out by user agent and by prefetch headers, and expect a few to get through. Read the guide to cookieless tracking for how 1Namecard records each click.

A clean list stays useful. Give every link a tag for the event and a note saying who asked for it and where it is printed. Then audit it once a quarter.

Included: Check each link's clicks over the last quarter. A link with none in 90 days is a candidate to disable.
Included: List links past their expiry date and check each one shows its fallback.
Included: Find links with no tag or note, and ask the owner.
Included: Delete only what is safe. In 1Namecard a deleted link can be restored.

Keep it to one hop, over HTTPS.

A redirect chain is a link that redirects to a link that redirects again. Each hop costs a round trip on a mobile connection, gives a query string another chance to be lost and adds a place where a permanent redirect can be cached. Point the short link at the final address: the right protocol, the right www choice and the right trailing slash. Test it by opening the link and counting how many times the address bar changes.

Use HTTPS for the short link and for the target. An address over plain HTTP can be altered on the way, and browsers warn about it. 1Namecard asks for a full target address starting with https://. QR codes for short links are in development; see the roadmap. The QR code on collateral guide shows where to put them once they are.

Run this checklist before anything goes to print.

Step 1.
The short link is on a domain you own, over HTTPS.
Step 2.
The key is lower case, readable aloud and follows the naming scheme.
Step 3.
The status code is temporary unless the move is final.
Step 4.
The target is the final address, with no redirect behind it.
Step 5.
UTM parameters are on the target, not in the printed code.
Step 6.
An expiry date and an evergreen fallback are set.
Step 7.
Preview title, description and a 1200 by 630 image are set.
Step 8.
Device addresses are tested on a real iPhone and a real Android phone.
Step 9.
A tag and a note say who asked for it and where it is printed.
Step 10.
The printed proof has been scanned on two phones.

Quick answers.

What is a branded short link?

A short link on a domain you own, such as go.yourcompany.com/demo, instead of one on a provider's domain. It looks like yours, builds your own reputation and stays under your control if you change tools.

Should a short link use a 301 or a 302 redirect?

Neither is ideal for printed codes. A 301 is permanent and browsers may cache it, which makes the target hard to change. A temporary code, 307 or 302, keeps the target editable. 1Namecard defaults to 307.

How long should a short link key be?

As short as stays readable. A rule of thumb is under about 15 characters, lower case only, with the show and the placement in it. 1Namecard allows 2 to 40 lower case letters, digits and hyphens.

Do short links hurt e-mail deliverability?

They can, depending on the domain. Some mail filters treat well-known public shortener domains with suspicion. A short link on your own domain has its own reputation, which you can keep clean. Ask your mail administrator how your filters behave.

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