A branded short link domain sounds like an infrastructure project. It is actually one DNS record. Here is the whole process, start to finish, including the decisions people get stuck on.
Step 1: Choose the domain
You have two good options.
- A subdomain of your main site, like go.yourbrand.com. Free if you already own the domain, instantly recognizable to your customers, and it inherits the trust of a domain that already has history. This is the right answer for most businesses.
- A dedicated short domain, like a .link or a shorter spelling of your brand. Worth it if your main domain is long, since every character counts in a 160-character text.
Common subdomain choices: go, get, l, txt, on. Pick one and stay with it. Consistency is part of the trust you are building.
One thing to avoid: do not put short links on your bare main domain. Your website lives there. A dedicated subdomain keeps campaign routing completely separate from your site, so neither can break the other.
Step 2: Connect it
In Linkturf, add the domain in your dashboard. We screen it against abuse blocklists (a clean history matters for deliverability, so we check up front), then give you the exact record to add.
CNAME record name: go value: cname.vercel-dns.com
For a bare domain, it is one A record instead. Either way, it is a single line at your DNS provider.
Log in to wherever your domain lives (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Squarespace), find DNS settings, add the record, save. Propagation usually takes minutes, occasionally up to an hour. SSL is issued automatically once the record is visible, so your links are https from the first click.
Step 3: Create your first links
Once the domain shows as live, every link you create rides on it. A few habits that pay off:
- Readable slugs beat random ones. go.yourbrand.com/sale earns more taps than go.yourbrand.com/x7k2p. People glance at links before tapping, especially in texts.
- One campaign, one slug. Reuse makes your analytics mush. Make /spring and /spring-vip separate links and you will know which list performed.
- Keep the destination one hop away. Link straight to the landing page. Redirect chains through other tools dilute trust and slow the tap-to-page time.
What you get for the 15 minutes
Links that carry your name, deliverability that reflects your own sending behavior instead of a stranger's, and click data that lives in your account instead of a third party's ad business. For the mechanics of why this matters so much in SMS specifically, read why SMS links get blocked.