Give Your Sites The Functionality They Deserve!

Is your head is full of exciting new business ideas? Strike while the iron is hot!

If you need something coded, call me for a chat and a quote. If you're looking for a full site build, or perhaps some nice add-ons to your own site, I can help you. Below I've listed several issues that affiliates regularly encounter, and offer simple solutions to each. If you feel you would benefit from these solutions, or any other programming tasks, please get in touch.

Which PPC and Organic Keywords are Your Most Profitable

Using the 'clickref' data that each network provides, you can accurately track which keywords (and other factors) result in commissions being earned.

Unfortunately it is sometimes necessary to hide the keywords that you're using from the merchants you're sending traffic to. Therefore it is inadvisable to send your keywords to the merchants as the clickref in clear text. A straightforward solution is to store each keyword that you use in a database, and only send the database record ID as the clickref data. However, storing each possible keyword combination can be a mind boggling task, so I recommend storing the adgroup details in your database and making a separate record of each keyword used.

Using this technique it is possible to store detailed information about the keywords that lead to successful sales, without making any of this information available to the merchant. If you would like me to implement this simple technique, call me.

Spend a little to make a lot.

Masking your Affiliate Links and Counting Exit Clicks

There are at least four good reasons for hiding/masking/cloaking your affiliate links.

  1. You don't want Google to know you are an affiliate.
  2. You don't want visitors to your site to be put off clicking on your ugly links, or even worse, realising it is an affiliate link, and instead of going via your link, they go via their own, or their mate's link.
  3. You want to be able to accurately record exit clicks, using the same recording method regardless of which affiliate networks you are sending your traffic via.
  4. You want to 'brand' exit clicks by displaying a quick intermediate page which displays a 'thank you visiting for our brand, you are now being redirected', à la Kelkoo, etc.

If you mask your links, your can accurately record all exit clicks, and then using a date selection tool, see how many links you sent to each merchant/product/network, etc. in any given time period. With a bit more tracking thrown in you can see which keywords produced clickthrus, which pages on your site contributed to clickthrus, etc.

Hide your affiliate links and record all exit data. You know it makes sense!

A/B Split Testing

In order to get the most from your pages, particularly your landing pages, it is really worthwhile using A/B split tests. It's simple enough to set up, but the results can make a huge difference to your bottom line. In their most common form, split tests involve running two versions of a landing page simultaneously, then performing a statistical significance test to determine which version produces the best results. Ideally this would be tied up with 'clickref' tracking to see which version produces the most profit.

Don't waste your time asking on forums which version is best. Don't always trust your instinct. Find out the truth, and see which version is better!

Search Engine Friendly URLs

Rather than www.mysite.co.uk/products.php?category=22&product=47 you can have www.mysite.co.uk/widgets/green_widgets

Interestingly, Google recently announced that it is no longer recommended to create 'friendly' URLs as they can read your dynamic URLs just fine. However, the demand for properly written friendly URLs is still there, with many SEO gurus doubting Google's motives for their announcement.

If you want friendly URLs, I can do them. Windows or Linux, it doesn't matter.

Give WordPress More Power!

WordPress is great, and it has some great plugins. If you want to add extra functionality that isn't readily available, or if you would like a hand with any aspect of WordPress, give me a call.

Screen Scraping

If you would like live prices and stock information displayed on your site, the only accurate way to achieve this is to use a 'screen scraper'. This is how sites like wii-consoles.co.uk obtain their data.

At Christmas time many shops sell out of popular products, and prices can change regularly. If you want to give your visitors the confidence to come back to your site to check when a product has come into stock you need to scrape. However, it's important not to upset the merchants by needlessly hammering their servers.

Scrape with confidence :-)