PPC and Landing Page Tracking

[WFNoob]

So i'm testing out adcenter, and what some tips on how to setup my tracking properly.

Direct to Merchant:

I bit on a keyword, and I am sending the link direct to the merchant using a CJ affiliate code. I use the SID to track my campaign/ad etc.

I want to avoid sending the link direct to CJ to protected my keyword, what's the best method?


Landing Page:

Same deal, say I send a link like: http://www.example.com/?ppc=adwords&keyword=cars

When someone then clicks on the CJ link, they can grab the referrer and figure out the keyword I bid on.

What options do I have to hide my info on both straight to merchant and landing page?


Also, do you guys then import your CJ reports to figure out which link converted the sale?

 

[Palmerville]

1) Creating your own landing page instead of sending to the cj link will solve ther referrer problem, but honestly unless you're bidding on words they expressly forbid you from promoting there's no point in trying to protect your keywords.

2) Home cook your own encryption for keywords, something simple. Or if you want tedius you could create a number for each keyword phrase and perform a lookup everytime you want to convert from number to phrase.

Personally I don't worry about the above. I've never found anything so secret about keywords that I needed to bother hiding them from the affiliate network.

 

[aeiouy]

I do redirects where I stuff information that I want to track into the sub-ids of the various networks. I don't send anything directly to the affiliate anymore. I process all of it, be it for tracking purposes, geo-targetting, or whatever.

 

[GeorgeB]

1) Creating your own landing page instead of sending to the cj link will solve ther referrer problem, but honestly unless you're bidding on words they expressly forbid you from promoting there's no point in trying to protect your keywords.

Umm how about protecting your keywords from other PPC marketeres?

If you use example.com/?ppc=adwords&keyword=mytopperformingkeyword THEN you bid on it and rank in the top 5 how long do you think it will take before your competition analyzes your link and grabs your keyword?

 

[Palmerville]

Umm how about protecting your keywords from other PPC marketeres?

If you use example.com/?ppc=adwords&keyword=mytopperformingkeyword THEN you bid on it and rank in the top 5 how long do you think it will take before your competition analyzes your link and grabs your keyword?

Umm if they typed it into a search engine and your ad comes up, they've already found one of your keywords. Makes little difference if you then include it in the url.

 

[WFNoob]

What i was mainly concerned with is protecting my keywords from my merchants/affiliate networks so they can't figure out what keywords I am using to send them traffic.