Create your own deeplinks in two minutes and absolutely for free
Hi guys. I run an affiliate marketing blog and get many questions like: “How to promote a link after clicking on which the Instagram app will be opened and some Instagram profile will be shown?”.
The thing is, that if you just put smth like
https://instagram.com/dvygolovinto your traffic source, then this link will be opened in a web browser. And that’s not what we want, cause usually the user is not logged in there, the experience is not the same as in the app and so on. Here’s where deeplinks come into place.
Deeplink is not smth new. They’ve been here from the times of first smarphones. Usual links on the internet start with http or https while deeplinks don’t. Almost all apps on your mobile phone register their own “protocols”. For example Instagram links start with instagram://. But the problem is that you can’t put this kind of link into your traffic source!
Redirects to the rescue! I’ll show you 3 ways to redirect a user to the Instagram app using PHP, JS and vanilla HTML.
PHP example
Any hosting with any PHP version will do. Create an index.php file there and put this code inside:
<?php
header('Location: instagram://user?username=dvygolov',301);
?>Save the file, forward yourself a link to your domain in any messenger and try it. You’ll see my Instagram profile, don’t forget to subscribe ;-)
JS example
If you don’t want to spend money on hosting you can use any website-constructor with Javascript support. Open index.html file and add this script there:
<script>
windows.location.replace("instagram://user?username=dvygolov");
</script>Check it the same way as in the previous example.
HTML example
Even if you don’t have Javascript support you can create a redirect. Here’s how. Open you index.html file and add this code INSIDE your <head> </head> tags.
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=instagram://user?username=dvygolov">And you are good to go!
Conclusion: don’t use paid service for such a simple thing like deeplinks, just add some code-magic and have fun!
