In This Post:
- Introduction to the Plug-in
- Video – How the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress Plug-in Works
- Confirmed to Work with These Affiliate Networks
- Why did I create the PPC Keyword Tracker?
- Get the PPC Keyword Tracker plug-in »
Hey there! I am very stoked to be able to introduce you to my new WordPress plug-in called the PPC Keyword Tracker (beta), which you can get, right now!
In a nutshell, the PPC Keyword Tracker plug-in for WordPress gives affiliate marketers the ability to track the keywords they are paying for on Google, Yahoo and Bing, and other paid advertising platforms, in order to drive traffic to an affiliate offer which they are promoting via WordPress-based blogs, websites and landing pages.
Until this WordPress plug-in became available, there really was no easy way for the Average Joe/Jane to automatically track PPC keyword-driven traffic to a WordPress-based landing page.
Currently, the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in can store, cloak and anonymize keywords associated with the following types of tracking IDs:
- affiliate subIDs (sid)
- tracking IDs (tid)
- campaign IDs (cid)
- custom tracking variables
- or create your own…
BONUS: I believe that this plug-ins ability to dynamically cloak and anonymize keywords is one of it’s strongest features. The Merchants you are promoting won’t get to take advantage of your hard work!
Example of a Cloaked & Anonymized Keyword:
From: http://www.yourdomainname.com/?tid=teeth-whitening
To: http://www.yourdomainname.com/?tid=5You can see that the keyword “teeth whitening” has been cloaked with the anonymized variable “5.” This number 5 is what gets dynamically passed through your affiliate URL to the merchant’s affiliate tracking software. (:
Even with the anonymized version of your keywords a merchant’s affiliate tracking software can credit the variable with an associated sale so you’ll know which keywords, tracking IDs and campaigns generate sales. Thus, you will now FINALLY be able to truly optimize your PPC campaigns down to the keyword level, as well as better optimize your other paid advertising campaigns.
Who wants to spend money on keywords and creatives that do not generate sales? Not me!
Scratching your head? Watch the video and it will all make sense.
How the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in Works
NOTE: The video was made prior to releasing my plug-in, which is available right now.
If you like my plug-in and it helps you to save time and make more money, feel free to donate to my Cliff Bar Builder fund (it’s a protein bar). (:
The PPC Keyword Tracker Plug-in’s main features include:
- Store Unique Tracking IDs (Variables)
- Affiliate URL Cloaking & Rotator
- Keyword Cloaking & Anonymizer (with full-export functionality)
- Basic Click Data
Confirmed to Work with These Affiliate Networks
- Clickbank (Confirmed)
- Networks using Direct Track Tracking (Confirmed)
- Neverblue (Confirmed)
- Azoogle (Confirmed)
- Commission Junction (Confirmed)*
- CX Digital (testing soon)
- GetAds (testing soon)
*NOTE: CJ.com only displays SID (subid) when a purchase is made. I think that’s lame, but it is what it is.
Why did I create the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in?
In early 2009 I created a WordPress-based blog and planned to use Google AdWords to buy some traffic to test the blog’s main offer (an e-book). Little did I know that trying to track the keywords I was paying for using a WordPress-based blog was going to be such a nightmare. I literally spent 6 – 9 months looking for such a plug-in!
I truly believed that any plug-in I found would have to be easy to use, automatically capture tracking IDs and associated keywords, store them and cloak and append an anonymized variable (tracking ID) to my affiliate URL so I would know which keywords were generating sales and the merchant would not. Who wants to pay for PPC keywords that don’t convert?
At any rate, I was about to give up looking and just pay somebody to build such a plug-in for me. That’s about when I came across a search engine ranking that looked promising. And it was!
It was a blog ran by a really nice and helpful guy named Jonathan Boettcher. He had a plug-in called the URL Rotator (with Tracking) Beta, which seemed close to what I was looking for. Thus, I downloaded and installed it.
I tested the plug-in for a few days, which I found to be quite easy. And, it was this testing of Jonathan’s URL Rotator plug-in that provided further validation for a few additional features I thought might make this a more complete option for myself and potentially affiliate marketers..
Following, after a bit of additional brainstorming and a few discussions with a super affiliate friend of mine, I decided it was time to have my own WordPress plug-in built… and the PPC Keyword Tracker was born.
You want the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in all for yourself?
To get my PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in, please fill out the short form below and you will receive a confirmation email with a download link. Thanks again and enjoy the plug-in. If you like it, please help me spread the word.
I HATE SPAM. I WILL NOT SPAM YOU!
I am an Internet marketing professional working and living in San Diego, California. I have over 10 years of hands-on
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If you want my plug-in, but feel uncomfortable about filling out the form to get it, just send email to me eric [at] ericitzkowitz.com and I’ll send it to you as an attachment. No worries! I know you’ll love it! Thanks.
Eric,
Thanks for your hard work! Question: Google is really “down” on affiliate marketers now, and knocks down Quality Score and/or ups bid prices and/or deletes accounts if they detect affiliate links on a landing page.
Does your plugin effectively cloak the link so it no longer looks like an affiliate link… or can one use a cloaker or php redirect and still use your plugin?
@Daniel The plug-in allows you to create a friendly URL. When you setup an affiliate group, you will be asked to create a “slug name” for your friendly URL. Let’s say you want your slug for this affiliate group to be “offer.” Your friendly URL will be http://www.your-domain-name.tld/offer. You will use this friendly URL wherever you want to create a link to the offer/squeeze page on the merchant site. It also includes a URL rotator, so you can test multiple offers all via the one friendly URL. That means you don’t have to update your landing page each time you want to try a similar offer from a different merchant(s).
Hey Eric, thanks for the shout out!
I see a bunch there that looks familiar, and some pretty cool new features too. I’m going to give the plugin a test drive – I’ll let you know what happens!
Cheers
Jonathan
Jonathan, thanks!
FYI… I further edited the part of this post that includes mention of you and your plug-in to hopefully let anybody reading this post know that testing and using your plug-in helped me to validate which additional features and functionality would make the plug-in even better. I also gave you some more link love. (:
Hi Erik,
Does PPC keyword tracker work on other affiliates network, e.g. other CPA network(Azoogleads)?
I noticed that there are only 4 options of URL templates on the setting.
Does that mean that it only works with these 4??
thanks!
@Ken Those are merely examples. You can use whatever tracking ID you want. Be sure you store whatever tracking ID you want the plug-in to remember. I really appreciate you using the plug-in. Let me know how it works. I’ll take everybody’s feedback and make the plug-in even better. Thanks! – Eric
Thanks Eric, I really like your plugin!
@Ken, You can use the plugin with multiple affiliate networks… the key isn’t the variable that you send to the plugin, the key is in how you format the outbound URLs. IE, you’d include a TID= for clickbank, SID= for CJ, and SUBID= for certain other networks.
UPDATE: When storing multiple variables in the Stored Variables field, do not use a space after a comma.
Wrong: var1, var2, var3
Right: var1,var2,var3