What is the best way of tracking direct traffic coming from print ads?
-
I have numerous print ads running and I would like to see which ads are sending traffic to my site. What is the best way of doing this? Redirects? Is this a recommended practice? Thanks!
-
Also make a notation in your analytics program about the day that each of these ads hit the general public. Like I mentioned in my earlier response, my experience was people would just type in the abc.com and ignore the /GQ or /Esquire. Having a notation in your analytics account can help you account for some of the direct traffic that just goes to the home page.
-
I'd consider custom landing pages with vanity URL's (rather than parameters) for each ad. Say you are the ABC company and you're running Ads in Esquire and GQ magazine.
URL for the GQ ad could be: www.abc.com/GQ
URL for the Esquire ad could be: www.abc.com/Esquire
Bonus points, for having unique content on each landing page optimized for that publications readership. If you absolutely can't do unqiue content, then don't create duplicate content, have 301 redirect both pages to your generic landing page.
If your publishing engine won't let you create vanity URL's, then you could pass the URL's with the ugly parameters through a URL shortner to get a very short URL. Many readers might appreciate fewer keystrokes to type, but obviously no readers will remember the URL, so you'll only get traffic that actively has the ad in front of the PC.
You might also consider adding QR codes in your print ads to ease readers getting to your pages and traffic attribution.
If it's an ad that people are likey to see what they are out and about... maybe a pub they read at the nail salon, doctors office, beach, etc.. rather than in their office/home you defiantely want to think about making all your landing pages mobile optmized. Perhaps even use a SMS shortcode as a response to the ad. That will make it easy on your readers, and give you excellent attribution capabilities.
Goodluck!
-
From personal experience, I found people stripped off the stuff I added to a URL. At Maker Faire one year we distributed a couple of thousand postcards with our URL and /make at the end. Hundreds of direct visits over the next couple of days, but all to the home page -- I think fewer than five went to the /make.
-
One solution could be to have a different url for each print ad. For example, you could advertise with:
Visit example.com?ref=a
but, that's ugly.
Another possibility would be to buy some new domain names that you could use in print and then 301 those to your main domain. So, let's say you have a business that sells plumbing supplies and your website was www.anycityplumber.com. You could run a print ad and say, "Visit www.ToiletProblemsInAnycity for more information!" Then, ToiletProblemsInAnycity is a 301 redirect to your site. You can then use your analytics data to see how much traffic your site gets from each of your made up domains.
[edit]Another way to use a new domain name would be to buy some for particular promotions, so buy something like www.anycityplumberfallcontest.com and then redirect that to your site.[/edit]
And finally, a variation on the first would be to have a separate folder for each landing page. So, you could advertise, "Visit www.Example.com/AnyCityNews/ for more information". The info on that landing page would be directly geared towards whatever the print ad was talking about.
-
You need to visit kaushik.net. Avinash has got a bunch of really cool ways to measure mutli-channel for offline as well as online.
I would guess it's too complex for a person to be able to explain in an answer on here as it's something that needs comprehensive instructions really. Try this: http://www.webanalytics20.com/ and you'll be sorted I think he has some videos on YouTube that might help too.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Dark Traffic & Long URLs - Clarification
Hi everyone, I've been reading the 2017 report by Groupon and the 2017 article by Neil Patel r.e. dark traffic. Both of these articles work on the assumption that most long URLs are not direct traffic because people wouldn't type a long URL into their browser. However, what happens to me personally all the time is that I start typing a URL into the browser, and the browser brings up a list of pages I've visited recently, and I click on some super long URL that I didn't bookmark but have visited in the past. That is legitimate direct traffic, but it's a long URL. I'm just wondering if there's something flawed in my reasoning or in the reasoning of Patel and Groupon. Maybe most people aren't relying on browsers like I am, or maybe things have changed a lot in the past 3 years. What do you think? And are there any more recent resources/articles that you would recommend r.e. trying to parse out dark traffic? https://neilpatel.com/blog/dark-traffic-stealing-data/ Thanks!
Search Behavior | | LivDetrick0 -
Best Way To Estimate Size Of Customer Base?
Hi. Just wondering what you all thought would be the best way to estimate a customer base for a certain niche? I'd be willing to pay for this service, if there are companies who do this sort of thing. But I'm assuming I'll be able to do it for free... How much weight should I putting into facebook ad data? Any advice?
Search Behavior | | PedroAndJobu0 -
My site traffic decreasing day by day
unfortunately its very bad for us . after panda update not affected any more but recent time . anybody can help us to fix the issue blog http://gurujobalert.com/ please thanks in advance
Search Behavior | | jenindras10 -
Tool Recommendations for Traffic Estimations
Hi Mozzers, Would appreciate your input on a tool (free or paid) that provides accurate information on the volume of traffic (paid and organic) that a site is getting every month. It would be nice if the tool can also provide data on the pages with most traffic (and number) page wise for a website? Cheers, SEO5..
Search Behavior | | SEO5Team0 -
GWMT - "Tag Site For Child Directed Treatment" Effect On Search / Rankings?
Hi All, We have a client who has been directed to tag their site for "Child Directed Treatment" in Webmaster tools to comply with AdExchange policies. The site is, generally speaking, directed at those between the ages of 13 and 16 along with their parents, but does NOT collect any data (No sign in, login, signups etc). You can find out more about the specific tag here (unfortunately not much more about it) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3221080?hl=en Our concern is that we have never heard of this specific tag, and our client is asking us to let them know if that this will have no effect on search traffic or ranking. I can't find much in the way of anyone who HAS implemented this tag and the effects it has had on their site. They are ad supported, receive millions of unique hits a month, and the majority of their traffic is from branded keywords. Would love to hear from anyone with ANY experience or thoughts on this process and what to be aware of. Your assistance is muchly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | SearchMarketers0 -
How to best figure out synonymous search phrases
I'm curious about synonymous key phrases and competitive key term analysis. I have a few methods for conducting research to find what phrases Google considers synonymous but they are very time consuming. What are some ways to figure this out? An example would be livestock and cattle. Are there any good ways to figure out user intent related key phrases? For example in our niche if someone is looking to purchase something Google often delivers pages with title tags that include the term supplies. Would it be advantageous to optimize for these types of key phrases if the competition is less or should I assume that Google groups exact match and synonym and intent match together when calculating relevancy. Eg I can choose to target livestock or cattle on page. Livestock gets a quarter the search volume cattle gets but has half the competition. Will I be competing against the cattle sites too? If so should I just bite the bullet and target cattle?
Search Behavior | | Punkaj0 -
Best way to check the number of backlinks?
I know everyone is going to say opensiteexplorer (for obvious reasons) however why is there such a diffference in numbers between the following resources: 1. Open Site Explorer - 23 ref. domains & 939 links 2. Majestic SEO - 49 ref. domains & 599 links (fresh) / 111 ref. domains & 2332 links (historic) 3. Google Webmaster Tools - 6001 I understand the difference between fresh/historic in Majestic, it's the vast difference in numbers between the three services?!
Search Behavior | | seanjohnson0 -
Hi guys.. post-penguin my website coming in and out of serps every other day... what reason for that? ie. #11 --> #300+
We had one of the pre-penguin "unnatural links " messages in WMT - then Penguin hit April 24th/25th.. wee then set to work on Link profile... since 19th May we have had numerous search phrases come 'back' into rank pre-penguin for a day ie.. #5 - #10 and then drop the next.. ie 300+ this has been happening across a wide range of key phrases.... in fact it may well be that the key phrases are added to the serps 'briefly' or for a set amount of time... but our ranking checker checks daily so while it appears to be every other day in and out there may be another pattern... but the question is What is Google doing here and Why? any suggestions?
Search Behavior | | Geminineil1