I have the chance to put a link to a project on the frontpage of a high traffic directory, but it has a character limit and the URL of the page I want to link is much longer. The project has a secondary domain for short URLs, but due to technical restrictions out of my control, this short URL doesn't redirect to the original page, but to a duplicate version with canonical tag pointing to it; therefore the link would be:
Short URL with redirect 301 --> Duplicate page with canonical tag --> Intended page
What would be the SEO effect of doing this? Google would still give full value to the original page or would it get diluted in the redirects and give nothing?
http://
, and the original page has 65 which I can't customize because I don't have full access to the CMS. And yea, for branding reasons I'd rather use the custom domain.