15 January 2008
Track Original Keyword Through Multiple Pages?
Here’s a question I just received on whether or not Keyword Radar can be used to track a visitor who may view multiple pages before clicking on over to the affiliate program you are promoting.
The good news is that YES, it can! Here’s the original question:
Brian, I have a couple of affiliate sites where users may click through 2 or 3 pages on that site before they click my affiliate link. Is Keyword Radar able to track the original keyword typed in through multiple pages? And when they do click on my affiliate link, would Keyword Radar still be able use a cloaked/redirection link?
Yes, Keyword Radar will still track it. But you still need to pass a tracking id to the affiliate program in the outbound affiliate URL.
But the tracking id you pass doesn’t have to be the original tracking id that the visitor was issued when they came to your site. In fact, it never will be, because Keyword Radar issues a unique tracking id for each page view.
For example,
When the visitor comes to your landing page, suppose they are cookied with a tracking id, say 123.
Suppose you want to redirect them to http://www.affprogram.com?tid
Within Keyword Radar’s Redirection module, create a redirection to redirect to http://www.affprogram.com?tid
Grab the Keyword Radar redirection code that the software automatically creates for you, and save it to a new page on your server, called recommend.htm
This new web page is now your cloaked affiliate URL, which you can insert into your landing page.
Now, when the visitor hovers over the recommend.htm link, they don’t see that it’s an affiliate link.
When the visitor clicks on this link, they will be ultimately redirected to the affiliate site by our software, and the software will insert the unique tracking id in the URL. But this tracking id in the url will be different than the original tracking id 123. It might be 124, 125 or some other number.
ie) The visitor may see this in the browser window after the redirection.
http://www.affprogram.com?tid
If this visitor buys the affiliate product, when you use our software to track the affiliate sales, the software will automatically trace the 126 tracking id back to the original 123 tracking id, and therefore display the keyword that visitor may have used to reach your website.
I welcome comments on any questions or tracking issues that you may have.
