What is a "301 Redirect"
A 301 redirect is one of those technical things that every Webmaster should know about, especially if they care anything about search engine optimizing their content. A 301 redirect tells search engines, like Google for example, that the requested content has been permanently moved to a new location. Search engines then adjust their search engine results to reflect the new location and dump the old URL.

301url is the industry's first search engine friendly URL-shrinking technology with 301URL.com, named after the WC3 standard for a permanent redirect

What about URL Shortening?
URL Shortening has been around for a while. URL shortening gives you the ability to take a really long URL and making it short enough that you can more easily share the URL in email and in casual discussion. Long URLS just do not fit on the back of a business card and almost always break in outbound email messages. Shortening complex URLS saves user aggravation and makes your life easier.

Putting the 2 Together
Now you can generate free shortened URLS that do not hurt your linking strategy. You can send anyone a 301url and be confident that if they post it online you will receive proper link value for the shortened URL. You take the link value. It's yours and shouldn't have to give it up when using a URL shortening service.

Why PRWeb Launched this Free Service?
PRWeb launched this service to fill an internal need within their press release platform. This was the result of customers wanting to use complex URLs that could potentially get mangled in email distributions to the major media outlets.

Since URLs within press releases get posted all over the Web in news sites and blogs, using existing URL shortening services was not an option. By using other services our users would have sacrificed valuable linking opportunities.