If you use a full, SEO Friendly URL like http://example.com/talks/about/star-wars then you can expect your URL to get eaten up by the users that submit it to bit.ly and others.
So my question is, would it be better to create your own internal shortener for links and just ignore any SEO benefit of the URL keywords in exchange for the SEO link juice from a straight URL? For example, something like this which is actually close to the matching shortened version?
http://example.com/dE
http://bit.ly/clPeI1
Is stopping link rot worth more than URL keywords?
If so, should we begin designing our application URL structure with this in mind?
Great question.
If you have the skills and resources you can create your own shortener and make sure you 301 redirect from the short URL to the long, SEO friendly, URL. That way you get the best of both worlds.
So: