Carl Willis

Should You Track Your Links?

Should You Track Your Links?

Should your track your links?  If you are new to the world of online , this question may have never even arisen in your mind.   This is one of the areas that sets the committed small business owner apart from those who are just simply “giving this a try.”   A business owner knows every metric within their business and leaves nothing to chance.

For an online business owner, the need to understand what is happening with their promotions is critical.  Typically as an online marketer you are going to be using links to products and services to build your business.  These links may be used in a variety of environments, such as your website, social media, email , video marketing, ppc advertising and banner ads just to name a few.   Understanding that your traffic may be coming from a variety of sources, using both paid and free forms of , it is critical to focus your efforts on those things that are most effective.   This is where the value of learning to track your links comes in.

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Some Key Reasons To Track Your Links

You may be wondering what should you be ?   There really are some key elements you will want to track consistently.   These are unique visits, clicks and conversions.   While there are many other things that can be tracked, these are key elements that any online marketer should be following at the very minimum.

Let me begin by discussing the of visits.  Visits are typically broken down into two categories:  Visits and unique visits.   These are very different, but they are both important.   For example if you have  a website that has 10,000 visits but only 2,500 unique visits this means that on average your visitors are returning approximately 4 times per person.   This would indicate that you are developing a loyal following and have a much higher probability of making sales from that traffic.  On the other hand if you had those same 10,000 visits from 8,000 unique visitors, you would know that your visitors were not coming back.   Having this information would then lead you to evaluate why you had such a low return visitor rate.   The low return rate indicates a low degree of loyalty and would generally make this a very difficult sales environment.

Another reason to track your links is to determine the felt needs of your audience.   For example, if one link in an email series gets significantly more traffic than any other link in that series, then you would want to focus more attention on this felt need.  It might lead you to not only make other offers towards that felt need, but to also consider revamping the email series more towards that felt need.  This same principle applies to determining which emails to keep and which emails to sideline in an [textAd1] series.   Those emails that are getting more clicks than others need to be positioned higher in the series and those that are getting no clicks need to be removed or retooled or placed further down in the series.

The final reason to track your links is to know what is making you money!  This is called conversion tracking.  Conversion tracking is typically accomplished by placing a small piece of tracking code onto the post sale landing page of your website.  This may be the thank you page, sign up page or download page.   By taking this step you can determine how many of your clicks are turning into sales or sign ups.   This type of link tracking will help you determine what marketing efforts and what products are making you the most money.   Having this information allows you to focus your efforts to the more profitable portions of your business.   You may also choose to add or drop products based on this information as well.

How To Track Your Links

Although there are many ways to track your traffic and your links, it is probably best to start with methods that are simple.   For traffic tracking, Google Analytics is the industry standard.   Google gives you a small piece of code to insert on your website and in return will provide you with a wealth of information on your visitors, including such things as origin, keywords, time on site, return visits, etc…   If you are using hosted site that uses Cpanel then I would recommend you use the Awstats tool in your Cpanel.  Awstats takes the information gathered about your traffic to a higher level.

For link tracking it is best to use a program that is designed to give you information about the activity on those links and also provides a link cloaking function.   I personally use Linktrack.info for my link tracking program.   Linktrack has settings for both the novice and professional online marketer.  For the more advanced marketer there are other solutions that may be more appropriate for your situation.

Taking the time to track your links is one of the keys to building a strong online business.   The more targeted and focused you become, the stronger your business will be.