Hi All, I was wondering if there are any options for creating a direct affiliate link AND tracking it. Ie - buy traffic from Google, but send them directly to the affiliate rather than a landing page. But with tracking. I've read about using iframes, but it would seem to me that this would affect your ad score. Any comments on that or redirects or anything else that might help me? If you have any solutions a very short example would be great also. (I can figure most things out but sometimes matching implementation to terminology is difficult) Thanks
Some things to think about first. When you send traffic directly to an affiliate link, you're stuck with whatever garbage landing page they have. Nine times out of ten you can create a better-optimized landing page that will give you a better QS and, as a result, cheaper clicks. (I have seen a number of good affililiate pages, though). As for tracking, if you're with a good program, you can send them a Google Conversion tag which they will then place on the Confirmation page.
Any thoughts on how best to go about writing landing pages? I am thinking some kind of CMS would make my life much easier. Joomla? Anyy suggestions?
The basic principles of SEO apply here. So, however you would go about optimizing a page for natural search is basically the same way you would optimize for AdWords. Basically--but not exactly. If you're not familiar with SEO, there are tons of free resources on the web--not necessary to buy a book or expensive program.