Tracking affiliate clicks as goals with Google Analytics

Author: Keith

11 Oct

Guest post by David Merry a Director at online live casino CastleCasino.com and manages the affiliate program marketing. You can find out more about promoting CastleCasino.com at www.castleaffiliates.com.

Reliable tracking software holds the affiliate industry together, without it we wouldn’t be able to put any faith in the programs which we promote and rely on. Regardless of the confidence which you have in your affiliate software operator it is always best to get another third party perspective, something which Google Analytics allows you to do in spectacular fashion.
Even if you have 100% faith in the tracking capability of your affiliate software, the greatest benefits come from the mountain of extra data analysis opportunities it provides you with. As a quick example to entice you to read further, you may naturally assume that the 100 clicks you send per day to your merchant come predominantly from a particular keyword you get 2000 visits for; however you may discover that actually they come from a keyword which only sends 500 visitors – therefore enabling you to shift your focus and allocate your budget better based on accurate statistics. In short, you could spend less money and make a lot more. What have you got to lose?

How to implement:

In order to allow Google Analytics to start tracking your outbound affiliate clicks as goals you need to complete the following:

Step 1: Assign a tracker to each link.

You will need to input an artificial tracker to each link that you want to track, which is created by tagging the page with the _trackPageview() JavaScript function. As an example, if you wanted to log every click on a particular link to www.keithbond.co.uk as a page view for /G1/keithbond.co.uk, you would add the following attribute to the link’s tag:

Although adding a tracker to every link is long winded initially it can be speeded up using a find and replace source code tool. From that point it becomes simple and second nature to include the JavaScript tracker when building a link. Please note, the G1 included in the link stands for ‘goal 1’ and just helps me categorise, you can add whatever you like.

Step 2: Use the JavaScript generated tracker as a goal

The task is now simple, simply add the tracking link to your Google Analytics goals section (Website Profile > Edit). Using the code above as an example you would add the following:
/G1/keithbond_co.uk

This should be added as a URL destination with head match selected in Google Analytics.

Simple!

How to use the tracking

Once the process that I have outlined has been implemented you should start to receive data reported as goals within hours.

The most basic report you will find is an overview of the goals which have been completed and the conversion rate. This doesn’t help analyse anything in particular however may give you insights into trended data, for example which date of the month are your conversion rates generally the highest.

Next browse the traffic sources section in your Analytics and break it down further to the traffic sources list. Then click on the ‘Goal Set’ tab and you will be greeted with exact click through percentages that every single source has given you. This should help you identify which sources are actually earning you the money and sending traffic to your merchant. Remember that traffic levels is just a worthless number, it is the traffic which converts which pays the mortgage.

You can also use this same method with the keywords which you rank in search engines for, allowing you to identify the consumer intent of those visiting your site through them. Remember, you can now filter out all of the keywords which are sending you non-converting traffic and allocate budget into what earns you money.

As my last example (from the millions I have!) you can even break this down into territories. The example below shoes me that people from Spain seem a lot more inclined to click on this particular brand – all I have to do to improve conversions for this is to include this brand on the Spanish versions of our sites. Simple, yet effective.