Why I Built My Own URL Shortener (9rl.io) with Node.js and MongoDB

Why I Built My Own URL Shortener (9rl.io) with Node.js and MongoDB Building a URL shortener is often seen as a "hello world" project for backend developers. However, when you combine Technical SEO with the need for full data ownership, it becomes a much more interesting challenge. In this post, I’ll share why I decided to build my own tool and how I optimized it for performance and search engines. 1. The Motivation: Why Not Bitly? As a digital marketer and developer, I had three main pain points