4 Easy Steps To Basic Keyword Conversion Tracking
Tracking your conversions at the keyword level is a big step forward in maximizing a PPC campaign’s profitability. Many marketers are intimidated by it, but there is no need to be. In fact, McKinsey even reported that big companies view insufficient metrics as a major obstacle to marketing online. Conversion tracking at the keyword level can be done in 4 easy steps, eliminating the guess work.
1. Set up your individual keyword URL’s. If you were going to send someone to your landing page and your URL looks like this:
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php
Change it so that each keyword has it’s own unique URL. I like to assign a number to each keyword. If I had 6 keywords, my URL’s would look like this:
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php?tid=1
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php?tid=2
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php?tid=3
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php?tid=4
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php?tid=5
http://www.mykickasslandingpage.com/sweat.php?tid=6
In this case, we are using a Clickbank product as an example. Each affiliate network has it’s own SubID tracking code.
Clickbank = tid
Commission Junction = sid
Share A Sale = afftrack
Linkshare = u1
Performics = mid
Make sure to use the appropriate code for the affiliate network you are using. If you do not use the right SubID code, the affiliate network cannot report which keyword made the conversion for you.
2. Paste your URL’s and keywords to Adwords. You can do this in the “Quick Add” screen for your keywords. The format to use is:
KEYWORD ** BID ** URL
3. Set up your affiliate link with PHP code. If your affiliate link looks like this:
<a href=”http://XXXXX.stopsweat.hop.clickbank.net”>Stop Sweating Now!</a>
Change it to this:
<a href”http://XXXXX.stopsweat.hop.clickbank.net?tid=<?php echo $_REQUEST[’tid’]; ?>" >Stop Sweating Now!</a>
This code will automatically take the tid from the URL and place it at the end of your affiliate link. Your affiliate network (Clickbank in this example) will record this tid and you can then view your transaction reports to determine which keyword generated the sale for you.
Adding the ?tid=<?php echo $_REQUEST[’tid’]; ?> to your affiliate link is all the coding you have to do. Again, make sure you are using the appropriate SubID tracking code specific to the affiliate network you are using.
4. Paste your affiliate link and PHP code into your landing page. Save your landing page with the .php extension so that the PHP code we insert in this step will work. If you save your landing page as a .html or some other extension, the PHP code will not work.
Pretty easy, and the benefits are ginormous. This won’t quite get you to be a tracking ninja yet, but you’ve definitely reached yellow belt status and you’ll kick the crap out of all those white belt marketers out there.
Questions you can answer using this method of PPC keyword conversion tracking:
Which keywords are profitable?
Which keywords are losing money?
How much profit am I making per keyword?
How much can I raise my PPC bids and still make a profit?
From there, you can begin to analyze WHY certain keywords are profitable and others are not. This will help you determine what you can do to get more profitable keywords.
Check out this video for more detailed information. If you want to view the video in full screen mode, right click the video and select “Zoom.”
To get the spreadsheet I used in the video, click here:
Link Generating Spreadsheet
Update: Here is the Mac Version of the video. Right click to download.
Pede
September 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Loved the video. I hope you come out with more.
You kept it entertaining with the bits of humor thrown in there and the pic of that chic with the banana.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Jack,
Thank you for the kind words. I have more planned. So as not to keep people guessing (and to keep myself honest), I also added a countdown timer as the first post on the site indicating when the next post will be released.
Pede
October 6th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Thank you for sharing!
October 11th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article 4 Easy Steps To Basic Keyword Conversion Tracking, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
October 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Daniel,
If I can help clarify anything, please let me know which parts are unclear and I’ll do my best.
Wahoo,
My pleasure. Thanks for stopping by.
Pede
October 16th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
The spreadsheet is a nice tool. However, if I go to past keywords using all three match types, it removes the parentheses from phrase match.
Am I missing something?
October 16th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
*go to paste*
October 16th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Any chance you can kick out a version of the spreadsheet that allows for 10k keywords?
Either that or a way to include the adgroup in the tracking.
That would rock. I’d pay for something like that.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
James,
Are you getting the phrase match problem when pasting into the spreadsheet or when pasting into Adwords? If it is when pasting into the spreadsheet, what program are you pasting from? I have not gotten that problem when pasting from the spreadsheet to Adwords. Let me know and I’ll see what I can do to help.
I’ve got some posts coming up over the next several weeks that will hopefully take care of both of the items you are looking for. Just trying to work out some of the kinks from my hacked together version to get something a little more user friendly. Any other features that would help you out?
Pede
October 17th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Pede
I am pasting from Notepad. I’ve tried it six ways from Sunday and it works fine except for the phrase match. Really strange.
BTW - I am then copying and pasting into AdWords Editor (v4)
On the other hand, this is really cool of you to post this sheet.
Another thing that would be good addition is if the sheet allowed you to Specify a campaign name so that the output could simply be uploaded into the keywords section of AdWords editor and it would then create the campaign, ad groups, bids, etc in one swoop.
Just a thought. This would be somewhat similar to Affiliate Radar if you’ve ever used it. Their campaign converter that creates keyword tracking URLs is probably the most useful part of that program.
JL
October 17th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
James,
Thanks for the input. I’ll add your suggestions to my list.
I tried posting from Notepad and am getting the same issue as you have. There are some formulas I could put into the spreadsheet, but I think they’d be kind of a pain in the ass for users to use.
Not a very elegant solution to the problem, but probably the easiest I have found so far is to paste out of Notepad into Word, then out of Word into Excel. That should keep the quotes intact. I’m sure there has to be something better, so I’ll keep working on it, but hopefully this helps for now.
Pede
October 17th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Cool. Thanks for the tip.
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
“…insufficient metrics as a major obstacle to marketing online.”
So true.
The current Hollywood Writers strike is about this very issue. Writers want a portion of Studios online revenue. But the studios say they don’t know how to track revenues made online.
As a marketer it’s critical to be able to determine which efforts are bearing fruit.
I’m guessing people that can provide the metrics down to the KW level, may be able to get good jobs working for the online divisions of major studios.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I would like to come here again. It sounds god to me, and there’s a lot of interesting information here