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Ever wondered which of your keywords and text ads from your PPC Advertsing efforts were actually converting into sales or leads? There is a free PPC affiliate tracking tool that has jumped on the scene that will make your tracking efforts a breeze. In this post I will do a quick review of their tracking tool and tell you about the cool contest that they have running. Straight off the bat you should know that the tracking data is stored on their servers which has it's benefits and drawbacks. I will be writing a post a little bit later explaining exactly how to setup your own in-house keyword tracking. The in-house method that I will discuss will be nothing compared to Tracking202 because Tracking202 is much more than just keyword tracking for one and the method I will describe will just be a quick and dirty solution, but a solution none-the-less.

Tracking More Than Just Keywords

As mentioned, Tracking 202 offers more that just keyword tracking. Myself, I wanted to try out their software to see which ads on which networks were converting and which keywords played a role. I was a little hesitant at first because they do potentially have access to all of your data and can see quickly what your text ads look like, what you spent on ads and what you earned, and which keywords are working for you. I tried it anyway with a couple of my campaigns because I do have some trust when they say that they won't start prying. Also, I didn't bother tracking costs on there or show my text ads, I simply kept track of converting keywords and ads and that's it. I'll explain how in a minute.

Tracking202 In A Nutshell As I See It

I'd like you to know now that I have NOT maximized the potential of Tracking202 by any means and haven't got much into to the available reports. I will give you a simplified view of how I see Tracking202. They take advantage of the fact that most affiliate networks and merchants allow you to append a sub id or tracking id to the affiliate URL's for tracking purposes. Their software will simply create a sub id on the fly for each visit and append that unique sub id to your affiliate link. If that visit results in a conversion then you can plug that sub id back into Tracking202 and find out a ton of information. Most importantly you can see which PPC engine, which ad and which keyword brought the conversion. You can also quickly see the exact URL the sale came from, the date and time of the original visit, the browser, the OS, the geographic location (mostly just the country), the IP Address, etc. The feature I like the most is Spy View. When viewing the Spy View page, you will see pretty much real-time data (I think it refreshes every 15 seconds) of every visit to your campaign or landing page.

Testing The Software Without Divulging Too Much Information

If you are a bit hesitant about letting them see your data, you can still try out the software but with limited functionality. Maybe you'd like to see converting keywords, text ads and PPC engines but want to leave all the dollar figures out of it. Here's how to do it:

In the Setup tab, start by adding a PPC engine. They give you a spot for your account name as well for further tracking. It seems they thought of everything. After the PPC engine, move to the next tab and enter an Affiliate Network. Just enter the name, like CPAEmpire for example.

On the Aff Campaigns tab enter the info about your campaign. A couple important fields are on this tab. It is important that the affiliate URL is entered in such away that it is expecting a sub id or tracking id appended to the end. In other words, your affiliate URL's should always end with an equals sign waiting for the unique sub id to be appended on-the-fly by the tool. That's really the whole point to all of this. If this isn't done correctly at the beginning, your goose is cooked. For specifics on the sub id you can look at the early posts in their Affiliate Marketing Blog. Also, the payout field should be left blank if you plan to track financial data elsewhere. The way you decide if you want the links cloaked is a little weird to me but choose whatever makes sense for your situation.

The landing page tab will give you the option to setup a simple or advanced landing page. Simple just means that there will be one affiliate link on the page whereas advanced will have two or more.

Now you can setup your text ads that you will use on the PPC engine and specify whether you will be directing traffic from them to your advanced landing page, simple landing page or direct linking. If you would like to keep your text ad copy secret from the owners of the site just enter anything you want in the fields. The important field is the name of the ad. You can cross reference that with an ad on the PPC Engine if it results in a conversion so you could see what's working for you. There's no reason in my opinion to enter your ad copy here but it's up to you.

Now get the code you need. The code it provides is some javascript and redirect PHP files for your landing pages depending on your landing page setup (advanced or simple). Also, you need to generate the URL used in your text ad at the PPC engine. It will be explained on that page how to set it up so that the URL will append the keyword for the big 3 search engines.

They Are Giving Away A Wii

There's actually only one free Nintendo Wii that they are giving away and since I'm going to win it, this section won't matter much to you. There is a blog contest that they are running to "drive more buzz". This review that you have been reading is somewhat of an entry for me for the contest. I sort of went over and above the requirements but I thought I would try to provide some more value. The contest rules state that you must create a 250+ word post describing the rules of the contest. These dudes know about SEO because there requirements involve specific anchor text for 4 links. Since I like their site and tool (for the most part), I will even be giving some dofollow links. Plus, I'm bored of editing my code for each and every external link with a rel="nofollow". Besides, I'm sitting at a whopping PR0 anyways, can't get any worse.

Aside from their main tool and the blog, there is an active private affiliate marketing forum and some great videos on affiliate marketing.

So, if you have a blog anywhere in the word that's at least 90 days old and has at least 30 blog posts then you qualify for the contest. It's important that they get at least 100 entries or they probably won't be giving away the Wii. So enter the contest and also start tracking your PPC affiliate campaigns... it's on the house.

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