How Did You Get Here?
When marketing your website, it's important to know which of
your efforts are producing results and which of them are a waste
of time.
You can learn a lot about this by analyzing your website's
statistics (assuming your webhost offers this service).
However, even with the best statistics programs, it can be
difficult to determine where exactly your visitors are coming
from. Did they arrive on your product page by clicking a link in
your newsletter or did they get there by clicking the banner
you've paid to have displayed on Yahoo?
The best way to answer this question is to track your links. You
can do this by buying link tracker software or by employing a
third-party service to do it for you.
However, if your budget is tight, there's one way you can track
your links without spending a dime.
This can be done by tagging a question mark followed by a piece
of text at the end of your hyperlinks. This will not affect the
way the link works, but will help you identify that link in your
website's statistics.
For example, http://www.yoursite.com/page1.htm?linka will point
simply to http://www.yoursite.com/page1.htm as if the "?linka"
were not there at all.
However, when you analyze your statistics, you will have
separate results for both links. That way you can determine how
many people visited page1.htm and how many people visited
page1.htm by clicking the link marked '?linka'.
You can use this to test the effectiveness of any or all of your
links. For example, if you want to know how many people are
arriving on your product page from your newsletter, your banner
ad and your home page, you could set up your links as follows:
The link from your newsletter:
www.yoursite.com/product.htm?newsletter The link from your
banner on Yahoo: www.yoursite.com/product.htm?yahoobanner The
link from your home page: www.yoursite.com/product.htm?home
When you analyze your visitor statistics you can clearly see how
each of these links are performing and then act accordingly.
As there is no limit to the amount of distinct links you can
create, you can easily track all your links at no cost.