URL offline advertising
-
Hi there,
I am in a bit of a dilemma, we are going to be doing some TV advertising and using the URL example.com/tv
I want this to take the user to the product that we are advertising example.com/product
For best practice should have a 301 redirect on /tv going to /product?
We are also doing magazine, newspaper advertising also, so the same question applies.
Kind Regards
-
Good point Keri,
Perhaps most important of all would be a nice big visible link to the product from the home page
Sha
-
Just a warning that not everyone will go to the /tv URL after seeing the commercial. I once distributed a couple of thousand postcards about our RC boat site at an even and got a nice spike in direct traffic, but fewer than 1% of the people actually typed in the URL listed on the postcard (it was /make for Maker Faire), they just went to the home page.
You'll want to make a note of some type in your analytics of when the ad is aired, as not everyone will go to the special URL, and six months later you'll want to know why you had a spike in direct visits to your home page.
-
Hi again Gary,
There appears to be various opinions out there suggesting as eunaneunan has said here, that Analytics will not register page loads via URL Redirects.
However, I personally work on a client site with more that 11,000 pages indexed in Google that are generated exclusively through the use of URL rewriting. Traffic on this site is reported in Analytics as with any other site. With this knowledge I would suggest that there should be no problem in tracking your page traffic through Analytics.
However, the obvious thing to do is to test it. Since the addition of a URL rewrite requires nothing more than the addition of a few lines of code in your .htaccess file you can put it in place, ask some people to click the link, wait 24 hours for the information to appear in Analytics if you don't have realtime analytics enabled and see the traffic is visible.
The other option you have available to you is to use a 302 (Temporary) Redirect. Once again, this requires the addition of some lines of code in the .htaccess file. The major difference is that a 302 redirect will be seen by search engines and also by the user - the URL will change in the browser when the Redirect occurs. Search engines will also see any change you make to the redirect in the future (for example if you choose to point it to a different product).
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi there,
Yes, the whole point is to track how successful the tv campaign is, so analytics is very important, and as you pointed out if the URL rewrite is used and does not give me anything in analytics then this is not suitable.
I do not want to create a custom page, I just want to take the user to the exciting product page plus track how many users are visiting example.com/tv
Any suggestions?
-
I think that if you use something like a htaccess redirect you won't get any analytics data as the page never gets a chance to load.
But is the whole point of the example.com/tv url is to see how successful the tv campaign was, why do you want it indexed? Just create a custom page in the same theme as the add then link to the section you want them to go.
-
Sorry, another question
the URL example/tv will I be able to see how many users have visited this page via Analytics?
Kind Regards
-
No probs...the Rewrite Rule goes in the .htaccess file.
Hope your campaign is successful
Sha
-
Just one more question if you don't mind:
The URL rewrite, where is this made? Server? On page? .htaccess file?
Kind Regards
-
Thanks very much for the tip
Kind Regards
-
Hi Gary,
Yes, the experience for the user is exactly the same. Any request for example.com/tv will tell the server to load example.com/product.
This will solve your problem without any other issues.
Sha
-
Hi there,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes this makes sense regarding the 301.
The URL rewrite, if I understand correctly this will do something similar to the 301 where the user types in example.com/tv and is redirected to example.com/product ?
Kind Regards
-
Hi Gary,
A 301 Redirect should only be used if the change of URL is unlikely to ever be changed. One of the reasons for this is that a 301 Redirect also signals to Search engines that the originating URL should be de-indexed and replaced with the target URL.
Since you could conceivably wish to use the same advertised URL at some time in the future, but send it to a different product, this is likely to be problematic.
My suggestion would be to use a simple URL Rewrite Rule instead of a Redirect. URL Rewites basically tell the server to load the target URL when a request is received for the originating URL.
A URL Rewrite has no effect on Search engines and can be removed or changed at any time with no effect at all.
Hope that helps,
Sha
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
-
Search Console Crawl Errors/Not Found - Strange URLs
Hello, In Google Search Console under Crawl > Crawl Errors > Not found I have strange URLs like the following: https://www.domain.com//UbaOZ/
Reporting & Analytics | | chuck-layton
https://www.domain.com//UPhXZ/
https://www.domain.com//KaUpZ/WYdhZ/SnQZZ/MOcUZ/ There is no info in Linked From tab. Have you seen this type of error??
Does anyone know whats causing it??
How should it be fixed?? Thanks for reading and the help!0 -
Redirecting all URLs appended with index.htm or index.html
It has come to my attention with one of my clients (WordPress website) that for some time they have within their Landing Page report (of GA - Google Analytics) URLs that should all be pointing to the one page, example: domain.com/about-us, also has a listing in GA as domain.com/about-us/index.htm Is this some kind of indication of a subdirectory issue? Has anyone had experience with this in such wordpress plugins as Yoast SEO, or other SEO plugin? My thoughts here are to simply redirect any of these non-existent files with a redirect in .htaccess - but what I'm using isn't working. I will insert the redirect here - - and any help would be greatly appreciated. RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html?
Reporting & Analytics | | cceebar
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html?$ http://www.dupontservicecenter.com/$1 [R=301,L] and this rewrite doesn't work: RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+).htm$ http://dupontservicecenter.com/$1.php [R,NC] _Cindy0 -
Has anybody else had unusual /feed crawl errors in GWT on normal url's?
I'm getting crawl error notifications in Google Webmaster tools for pages that do not exist on my sites?! Basically normal URL's with /feed on the end.. http://jobs-transport.co.uk/submit/feed/ http://jobs-transport.co.uk/login/feed Has any body else experienced this problem? I have no idea why this is happening. Simon
Reporting & Analytics | | simmo2350 -
Custom URL tracking for paid online ads
Hello! Our marketing team is testing paid online ad networks (banner ads, mobile ads and video ads) this year in addition to some traditional television advertising. We would like to track how effective these various ads are, and I'm wondering the best method to do so. In all cases, we're not setting up new pages for these ads to go to. They will simply go to an existing page on our site. For tracking purposes, here's what I'm wondering... If we set up custom URLs on our site (e.g. www.example.com/sports) then have the visitor immediately redirected to the intended page on our site (typically our home page), will Google Analytics show that custom URL in any report to see how much traffic flowed through it? Or will it not register because a page doesn't really exist for that URL? The biggest issue is with the banner ad network, which targets around ten categories of sites (sports, moms, entertainment, etc.). I know I'll be able to find the network listed as a referrer to see the total traffic the network sent us, but we would like to know specifically which category drove the visits. As such, would a custom URL for each category work, or will Google Analytics not pick it up because it's not hitting an actual page? For television ads, we are showing our URL as www.example.com/tv, which would then redirect to the intended landing page. In this case, it's a little more challenging because I won't have the referrer traffic to go by. But same problem... will GA recognize that URL and show it in Behavior > Site Content > All Pages? I hope this makes sense. If not please let me know and I'll try to explain. Thanks in advance,
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO
Erik0 -
Landing page URL appearing as keyword
Hi Mozers, I've recently experienced the URLs of my key landing pages coming up as keywords. This has been on the rise since early July (when it was relatively insignificant) to the current position (see image below) where they make up the majority of my top keywords. Drilling down into a bit more detail, this seems to be almost exclusively Desktop traffic but in terms of Technology there are no clear standouts (seems to be mostly Windows OS and Chrome). Has anyone else been experiencing this?
Reporting & Analytics | | mopland0 -
What is the SEO Impact of Adding a Directory to URL
I would like to add a new directory named “products” for all of the product detail pages on my site. Instead of having the URL for a product be “mysite.com/product-details-page.aspx” we would like to change it to “mysite.com.com/products/product-detail-page.aspx.” I want to do this to enable us to add product pages to our traffic funnel analysis by filtering visits to the "product" directory - right now we can't track visits to product pages in the funnel because they are just one-off the main site. I know this change will require redirects for every single product. Is there anything else that needs to be done? My main question is, will this change negatively impact the SEO value of the product pages? We have several product pages ranking in the SERPs, and I don't know if pushing them one directory further will change that. Thanks for your input!
Reporting & Analytics | | pbhatt0 -
Does using Google URL Builder override original source in Google Analytics?
During a free trial on Tatango, we send daily emails to customers to give them advice, resources, etc. We started using Google URL Builder http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 to create individual links in each of these emails, but when the customer purchases a subscription now, the source in GA isn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. they are all showing up as the source we created using the URL builder for each email. Does Google URL builder override the original source in Google Analytic?
Reporting & Analytics | | Tatango0 -
URL-structure change - former long-tail traffic gone
Hey people, I'm sure many of you applied changes to the URL structure of a client's or your own website before. So did I for obvious reason: The structure before was like www.domain.com/brand_page/_22-key-word-translatedkeyword.php (ranked 20). This was changed to www.domain.com/key-word.html.
Reporting & Analytics | | dumperama
Edit: Also on-page it was optimized, but only taking out worthless links like "keyword-link to other page" and adding a relevant SEO text (also valuable for the user) Now, for the targeted short-tail keyword, the outcome was great - ranking increased by 17 landing the page on the first SERP. But: Before this page garnered a wide range of long-tail keyword traffic.To be exact: 2600 different keywords generated traffic for that page in a period of 1 month. Now the newly structured site (also on-page optimized) only receives traffic from around 100 keywords. You can imagine that the absolute amount of visits also dropped. So I'd like to know if you observed similar results. Another question that's coming up in this context: How regularly does Google refresh the keywords associated with a page? Like: Is this page really relevant for this one keyword we associated it with 5 years ago? Because it is clear, when I'm looking at the aforementioned 2600 KW in detail, most don't have anything to do with the site, i.e. are not mentioned at all. Still they generated valuable traffic though. All of this is really crucial to this project, because soon the whole website's supposed to be relaunched with optimized URL structure and of course everything else that's need SEO wise... I'd love to hear your experiences. Thanks!!0