I have a question that maybe some of you who freelance may know. If you shorten a link to post it on Twitter does that link still count as a backlink? I would still use them because a long link string takes up too much of the Twitter word limit, if it doesn't exceed it altogether, but it cuts the value in half.
There are two values to a Twitter or Facebook backlink: one is to get traffic. That would still occur even if the link isn't a valid backlink for search engines. The other reason is to get search engine recognition for incoming links of value. Facebook and Twitter are both valuable backlink sites. So losing the link juice from a "cloaked" link would destroy that part of the value.
