Will using Bitly shortened URLs affect my onpage SEO guys.+ question regarding Google + :)

Hi Guys

I'm not going to just copy and paste the title as it's LQ, I'll go ahead and ask again, so if I were to add Bitly shortened links inside download buttons on posts/threads via our websites, can this be bad for onpage SEO value? I mean could we get penalized or anything for this.

Lastly, based on Google + I can see why it will be good for SEO value, but I don't want to get punished by over doing it. Is there a safe amount to use on posts/pages, I have seen Fiverr gigs selling this type of service but mostly IMO it would be spam crap.

Any help on this would be really appreciated.

Can anyone help me out

Yes really helps you to get a good ranking because if you are having a big url then you can short that url on the bitly shorthand.

Mr_Cracker,

When a URL is SEF (search engine friendly) it isn't really the fact that it is short that makes it good for SEO. It is the fact that there are keywords present in it and also that it is free from arbitrary characters that are hard for users to read. Using a bitly link does not really accomplish those goals as there are no keywords in the URL and it is still an ugly URL. Yes it is short but that doesn't really help anything.

As far as having them on a page, I don't see how this would negatively impact SEO however it could make things harder in other areas. For instance where do these links go? Are they internal or external? Regardless of whether they are internal or external, you will have a hard time tracking them in any tracking software you have installed on the site. You can get some data from Bitly but not as much as some of the free web based platforms out there. If these are internal pages, you could be losing some link authority by not having the real URL in there.

Here is a similar discussion on this topic,

http://moz.com/community/q/bit-ly-urls-are-they-seo-friendly-2

Hope that helps,

Shawn