Keyword to Commission Tracking

Knowing which search keywords result in you earning a commission is invaluable information. This is true whether you are using SEO, PPC via a landing page, or PPC direct to the merchant. By knowing which keywords, or groups of keywords result in commissions being earned, you can spend more time/money obtaining visitors on the successful keywords, and less on the unprofitable ones. When running a PPC campaign, applying this knowledge can easily be the difference between profit and loss.

How does it work?

The method used is fairly technical, but I will try to explain in layman's terms.

  1. When a visitor lands on your website, 'get' the referral string.

  2. The referral string contains the search keywords that were used, so these are extracted and stored in a database table.

  3. Each database table row should also contain an ID, so you may have a table that looks something like this:

    Visitor IDKeywords
    101cheap ipod
    102ipod 16GB
    103ipod discount
    104new ipod

  4. The Visitor ID should now be stored in a session or cookie.

  5. When the visitor leaves your website via an affiliate link, they should be sent via an 'exit' script.

  6. The exit script retrieves the Visitor ID from the session or cookie, and appends it to the affiliate URL as a 'clickref' parameter, before redirecting the visitor automatically.

  8. The affiliate network now have your Visitor's ID stored along with the details of the click, So when a sale is recorded, and a commission is earned, this value if shown along side the commission details.

  9. Now you simply see which clickref/visitor IDs are associated with which commissions, and then look up those numbers in your own database to see which keywords were used

The method described above works with all affiliate networks that I know of, and also works with Amazon.co.uk when used via the Zanox network.

To make this system really efficient I highly recommend automating retrieval of the commission data from each affiliate network, and importing it directly into your own database. It is then possible to view all you commission data together on one page, together with the keywords that generated the sales. When used in combination with the Google Adwords API it is possible to compare the amount spent on each keyword with the amount of commission earned from each. Et voila, you will never waste money on PPC again!

If you would like us to set this tracking system up on your affiliate sites, please get in touch.

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