Are YOU getting your Money's Worth When Buying Traffic? . . . The beginner's guide to tracking click-throughs and ROI from pay-per-click engines. Part 1

by Robin Nobles and Dave Barry

If you're just beginning to try your hand with the pay-per-click engines, one thing you need to know is the importance of setting up tracking URL’s so you're better able to track click-throughs and sales.

Why go to the trouble? Because if you don't set up some sort of tracking system, you'll never know if your keyword purchases are really working for you. And if you don't know if they're working for you, you won't be able to make an educated decision on whether or not to discard a keyword campaign, expand it, choose different keywords, etc.

There are some excellent software programs and services on the market that will track individual keyword purchases and determine your ROI (return on investment), and we'll name some of them at the end of this article. For those who purchase large numbers of keywords, such programs are crucial.

But this article is for those who are just getting started and who don't want to invest in a software program yet – they just want to purchase a few keywords and get their feet wet with the pay-per-click engines.

Using a Tracking URL to Track Traffic

Overture claims that 95 percent of all Overture traffic comes from their partner sites, such as Yahoo and MSN. So, it’s important to track your Overture traffic so you can be sure how much traffic you're getting for each of your keyword purchases.

Let’s say that your URL is http://www.english-bulldogs.com. To add tracking capability to such a URL, you'd tack on:

?source=Overture

...so your URL would look this:

http://www.english-bulldogs.com/?source=Overture

If the keyword phrase you're tracking is english bulldog puppies, here’s the tracking URL you would use:

http://www.english- bulldogs.com/?source=Overture&kw=english+bulldog+puppies

Change the URL you have listed with Overture for that keyword phrase to the tracking URL by going to Overture’s Managed Listing Section of the DirecTraffic Center.

If the URL already has a question mark in it, you will have to add &source=Overture to the end. For example:

From: http://www.english-bulldogs.com/search.cgi?q=dogs To: http://www.english- bulldogs.com/search.cgi?q=dogs&source=Overture&kw=english +bulldog+puppies

If the URL has a # character, the ?source=Overture will need to be inserted prior to the # sign. For example:

From: http://www.english-bulldogs.com/#oscar To: http://www.english- bulldogs.com/?source=Overture&kw=english+bulldog+puppies#oscar

Be sure to test the new tracking URL to verify that the modified URL works as well as the original, and don't use the tracking URL for anything other than tracking your pay engine traffic.

After setting up the tracking URL’s, you should be able to look for source=Overture in your server log files to see how much traffic you're getting from Overture for each of your keyword phrases. Your log analysis software, depending on which one you use, will be able to compile that information for you.

But How Do You Know Which Traffic Converts to Sales?

Determining your conversion rate is easier if your site supports some type of user session tracking, such as cookies, server-side scripting, etc. If you create a user session (or set a cookie) when someone visits your site, then you can count how many user sessions contained a successful page view that will let you know that a desired action has been completed, such as a receipt of goods sold or signing up for your newsletter. You can then analyze the referral source for each of your user sessions to count how many conversions came from Overture based on each keyword phrase.

How Can You Set up User Session Tracking?

Editors note: These instructions will apply to those of you already running your web sites on Microsoft's IIS.

Dave Barry of SmartCertify explains:

Session Tracking is made possible by using .asp (active server pages) on your Web site. There are several ways in which to accomplish this. One is by assigning a query string value to your link or using the referrer information to assign a proper code to track. In the asp environment, there is a large collection of information that you have access to, including the exact page the visitor came from, and if a search engine, the keywords used to find your site.

(Continued in Part 2. Contact robin@s... for the complete article.)

Robin Nobles, along with partner John Alexander, teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day search engine marketing workshops through Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com). Robin also teaches online search engine marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com), and her latest books, Web Site Analysis and Reporting and Streetwise Maximize Web Site Traffic, can be ordered through Amazon. Dave Barry is a professional Webmaster, Web designer, programmer, security expert, and search engine optimizer, all rolled up into one amazingly talented man who works for SmartCertify Direct. (http://www.smartcertify.com) He has also begun working with Search Engine Workshops to put on “hands on” search engine marketing workshops at locations across the globe. Dave recently set up Computer Concierge International, which is a full-service networking and Internet solutions company. (http://www.seo- concierge.net)

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