How Affiliates can Work out Which Keywords are Converting
Your AdWords campaign can be a lot more profitable if you cut out the keywords that cost you more than they make. With AdWords conversion tracking it’s easy to see how much money keywords are making. The problem for us affiliates is, Amazon aren’t going to let us edit their site to include our AdWords tracking code. So here is the next best thing.
Here are some example stats showing the percentage of site visitors using various keywords:
| Keyword> | Visitors |
|---|---|
| nintendo dsi console | 32.90% |
| pink dsi | 5.80% |
| nintendo dsi pink | 5.30% |
| nintendo dsi pink uk | 3.70% |
| pink nintendo dsi | 2.30% |
| pink dsi uk | 2% |
| nintendo dsi consoles | 1.80% |
| best price dsi | 1.80% |
| dsi consoles | 1.70% |
| nintendo dsi blue | 1.60% |
| Other phrases | 40.60% |
The idea here is to remove groups of searches which aren’t profitable. In this example I’m only using 10 keyword phrases to keep it simple. In practice you should do this with every important keyword (e.g. every keyword with more than 10 searches per month).
Step 1. Group your important keywords.
Step 2. Make an ad group for each keyword group. Include negative keywords so the ad groups don’t overlap.
Step 3. Create a landing page for each ad group. This can be a dynamic (e.g. php) page or a static page. Use a different tracking code in the affiliate links for each ad group’s landing page.
(Amazon UK style tracking codes)
Pink-dsi-21
dsi-console-21
blue-dsi-21
dsi-price-21
To increase conversion rates, you can take this opportunity to target the text and images on each landing page separately.
Step 4. Wait a few days.
Step 5. Check you’re making money.Take the revenue you’ve made from each tracking code and check it is higher than the cost of running the ad group. If not, decrease your CPC bid or stop the ad group. If you are making a profit, you can experiment with raising and lowering the CPC for maximum profit or just leave it as it is.
I’ve been asked a question on the Network Blazer Forum but I’m going to answer it on here just to be awkward.I was asked;
Could you show me how exactly to do this on an NB site? How does it tell though if it actually made a sale on the merchant’s site as I can only put the code on my site can’t I? Also, great blog by the way. Out of interest is the y axis pounds or number of sales?
With Network Blazer sites, as it still won’t let you add any of your own code
you’ll have to make a whole landing page (page that the ad links to) for each keyword group. You can’t put code on the merchant’s site so you have to use a different affiliate tracking code on each landing page. It’ll help your site’s SEO if you make a landing page for each keyword group but if that’s too much work (which it can be if you’ve got loads of keyword groups) just make copies of the same page with the only difference being the tracking code. Make sure you don’t link to these copied pages because it might confuse Google.
The Y axis on my affilaite sales chart is the number of high spec laptops I sold… OK, not really but it is the number of sales.
What code would you need to add?
Network Blazer won’t let you add HTML, PHP or any web design code so you have to get a different tracking code in your affiliate links. If you’re using Amazon Associates, click “manage” on the left hand side when you’ve logged in so you can see add tracking codes.
Hey,
I must have phrased it wrong, What I meant was what piece of code would you need to add?
If you were using php you’d want each ad to point to a URL with a variable in it (like http://www.example.com/hats.php?colour=green).
Then have in the php something along the lines of this when outputting your affiliate code
"http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001TH8HAS?ie=UTF8&tag=";
if GET_colour==green
[print"green-21"];
else
[print"red-21"];
print"&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B001TH8HAS";
Sorry, that’s not quite act php code, I can’t do it off the top of my head. Sorry if I’ve misunderstood you again.
By the way php fans, for security reasons, wordpress won’t let me use “echo” like that in comments which is why I used print. Interesting I thought… probably just me.