UK Search Engine Marketing Blog | B10G

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For anyone looking to send out email campaigns, undertake paid search campaigns or banner advertising it is imperative that you track all the links pointing to your site effectively.

By tracking links effectively it enables you to make decisions based on fact rather than anecdotal evidence, something which I think far to many companies do. My personal opinion is that in business, particularly internet based businesses there is no excuse for going with a gut feel when there are s many ways to track success of campaigns effectively.

One of the best tools on the market in my opinion for website stats is Google Analytics, firstly because of the cost (it’s free), but secondly due to the depth of reporting you can delve into.

One of the best features I think is the way you can break any report down by Campaign, Source, Keyword using effective tracking URLS.

To make the task of creating Google Analytics Tracking URL Tool easier google has created a very simple URL tool.

It could not be easier to use.

1. Enter your target URL
2. Fill out the required fields - Campaign Source, Campaign Medium and Campaign Name
3. Fill out any optional fields - Campaign Term (allows you to track paid keywords and Campaign Content ( primarily for differntiating between links e.g. logo link / text link
4. Click Generate URL

Once you have done that you are given a URL that you can just paste into your email/html or whereever it is required.

An example URL for say a Yahoo Paid Search Link would look something like this.

http://www.domain.com/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=fishing%2Brod&utm_campaign=Fishing

Here you can see we have added the following details

Campaign Source = Yahoo
Campaign Medium = cpc (This indicates to analytics that this is a cost per click
Campaign Name = Fishing (Typically on Paid Search you would use the campaign/adgroup name)
Campaign Term = Fishing Rod

This allows us to the drill down through our analytics to get specific information on all the visitors that came from the term fishing rod on Yahoo paid search. This is particularly invaluable for ecommerce sites who may be bidding on terms that drive lots of traffic, but rarely convert to sales.

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