How often have you gone searching for the correct link for a meeting moments before it was scheduled to start? Same… same. And you know if you + I are doing that, our leads + clients are doing that too. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can set up custom Zoom links within WordPress that will be easy for everyone to remember. Plus, they’ll be on-brand.
Redirects = your custom Zoom links
I’ve gone over setting up redirects within WordPress before. And that process is the same for setting up custom (+ branded) links that route to third-party sites or services that you use to run your business.
Back in the day, using a service like bitly was the thing to do. I’d much rather keep everything on my own site + it’s easy to do.
Services like bitly allow you to track links + use a different domain than your website. Which can come in handy for folks managing multiple brands. If you’ve got one main website + some links that you frequently hand out to clients, using a redirect within WordPress will solve a few headaches for you.
Creating your redirect
In order to set up your custom Zoom links, or whatever service you want to use, you’ll need:
- a redirect plugin already installed + active on your WordPress website (I use + recommend this free one to bloggers + business owners)
- the link that you want folks to land on — your Zoom meeting room, your Calendly event, your private Facebook group, etc
- the link that you want to use — the URL that you’ll give out to leads or clients in your email replies or on social media captions
Test your branded link
Before we create the redirect, there’s one important step. Test the link that you want to use. Say you wanted to use yourdomain.com/session to book a consult session. Type that into your browser + make sure that the page doesn’t already exist on your site. If it does, you’ll need to come up with a new link or edit the existing one.
Keep in mind that WordPress is smart + tries to avoid broken links like the plague. If you typed yourdomain.com/session and the URL yourdomain.com/secrets-to-a-successful-session loaded, you can still use the original link you had in mind.
Create your redirect
All you need to do is add a new redirect with the plugin of your choice. Each plugin is slightly different, but here are the essentials:
- set the source URL to the backend of your custom link — the example would be /session because you don’t need to add your domain since you’re already on your own website
- set the target URL to your Zoom meeting room or whatever service you’re linking to
- save the changes
- test your custom Zoom link by opening a private / incognito browser + typing in the branded link
If there are options to ignore + pass parameters to the target, I would suggest doing that. Why? Because if you share this link on social media, you’ll likely have URL parameters added to the end of the link. If you don’t have the option selected, your redirect might not work.
And if you need