Are separate pages advisable for PPC

- as tracking URLs, or for content

[Robert Charlton]

I'm getting inquiries from potential clients who are considering PPC because they don't want to make any changes to their websites. I would think, though, that it's advisable, for a number of reasons, to have extra pages dedicated to PPC.

To double-check PPC charges, I assume it's wise to monitor actual click-throughs to your site. Overture, on one if its FAQ pages, advises the use of "tracking URLs." I assume this means separate pages.

Separate pages might be also make the content more appropriate the the search query... though at that point you're almost getting into optimizing the site.

What do people who use PPC a lot do... new dedicated PPC urls, or just the home page or an existing internal page?

[ptietze]

You can make any url a tracking url by appending "&source=xxxxx" where the xxxx could be the ppc (overture). Then you can monitor referrals to your site through you web log analysis application.

The decision whether to create separate pages should be content driven. Will the referred visitor easily find what they were searching for.

[webdiversity]

Dedicated landing pages are a good way to go, it's a lot easier to track activity on log files if this page is seperate from the normal pages.

Tracking urls can be as simple as [dummydomain.com...] which will take you to the home page for the site but show up the source=overture on log files and can be tracked via your logging software.

I also think these landing pages can be useful because you might need 3 or 4 of them to capture visitors relevant to your offering and you may need them to get round the relevancy guidelines.

So in the above example if you sell widgets you can have a dedicated "widget page" a "blue widget page" a "red widget page" and monitor seperately the success of each one, whereas if you land everyone on the same page, you need to do a lot more digging to see where the success comes from.

Affiliate software is being used to track some of these URL's and there are other ad tracking tools available.

If you can't or don't want to add seperate landing pages it can still be easy to track the activity.

[Mike_Mackin]

>you may need them to get round the relevancy guidelines.

Chances are that you WILL need them with Overture.

[DrCool]

If you are bidding on specific product related keywords it would probably be the best way to go. If you are dealing with broader terms I don't think it would make much of a difference.

[Robert Charlton]

Thanks for all the good input...

>>You can make any url a tracking url by appending "&source=xxxxx"<<

>>Tracking urls can be as simple as [dummydomain.com...] which will take you to the home page for the site but show up the source=overture on log files and can be tracked via your logging software.<<

I don't know much about servers and I'm not sure I understand the mechanics of this. If I'm reading this right, I assume that I make no changes to the pages but append /source=sourcename to the url of the page I'm tracking.

Assuming I want all visitors to come to the homepage and the homepage is relevant enough... does this mean I could append "/source=rwOv" for tracking "red widgets" on Overture, "/source=bwOv" for tracking "blue widgets" on Overture, "/source=rwGg" for tracking "red widgets" on Google, etc?... or am I misunderstanding?

[ptietze]

I have never used the "/" method, but you should be able to append anything you want to your url after an "&".

Overture suggest using "/?source=overture", but this creates image loading errors on our site. The "&source=overture" method works fine for us. Our web log analysis software (SurfAid) is configured to capture anything with &source=, so we can track the source of any referral using this method.

Here is a link to Overture's suggestions on tracking.

[overture.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

I'm assuming that the tracking url is just used at the source... on Overture, eg, not on the site... and that the page urls on the site would stay the same. Is this correct?

I also assume that if the tracking url were used, not for PPC, but to track other kinds of links, that it would mess up transmitted PageRank.

This is off topic and maybe I should start another thread in Tracking and Logging, but is there any way of tracking links to a site's home page that would not interfere with PageRank?

[ptietze]

Yes, the tracking url is used only at the source (in this case Overture). The page urls stay the same. I can't help on the other questions, but will be interested in the responses.

[webdiversity]

We use a 3rd party service to track clicks. The format for tracking URL's is something like [dummydomain.com...]

So in this format you get the PHP file that has a redirect to the actual page(s) you want to use, good if you want to test 2 or 3 varieties of the same page under the one tracking URL, with different results. The username is to identify you to the hosted system, the campaign enables you to monitor different campaigns (might be on Google or Overture, or product group A or B), then you have the cost per click and keyword as a sub-campaign.

This technique works well with Overture. You can track a bunch of keywords with reasonable accuracy and get the same sort of detail that some software solution providers would charge several hundred dollars a month for.