ROI on linked traffic

[Atomical]

Let's say you amass a large amount of links from sites that have the same interest as your site. Do you find that traffic to be qualified to make a purchase, or extremely unqualified and ambiguous?

[jlknauff]

It would definately be more qualified than traffic from unrelated sites (in most cases). Plus, if they leave a site that they started at they are obviously fairly interested in your product or service.

[dilligaf]

Jeremy's right in that it can be some very qualified traffic depending on the relationship between the sites and the placement of the links. The big question comes to sorting out the performers from the non-performers so you know whether you're getting a bang for the buck or just pi$$ing into the wind.

Rumor has it that Joc's new software (the bothunter) does this for you but I don't know first hand.

[jlknauff]

D, if your talking about performance of link that you paid for (rather than traded) I've used subs set up with redirects to track them very accurately. On the other hand, if you're buying text links for SEO subs won't work.

[dilligaf]

My understanding is that it tracks all referrers to the point of sale. I've just been using it for tracking robots.

[Atomical]

It's pretty easy to track referers and the log file analyzer I posted a while back did just that... But if you really want to track someone through an e-commerrce site you need to register the variable with their session, and set their referer if it hasn't been set. Once they get to the checkout you store the referer along with their order.

[jocelyn]

[QUOTE=dilligaf]My understanding is that it tracks all referrers to the point of sale. I've just been using it for tracking robots.[/QUOTE]
You understoond right buddy. You can make an entry page report (sales report)on a page to know how visitors found your site and got to that page.

So if you do a report on the 'thank you for your purchase' page, you will have the list of all searches and/or sites that sent those visitors that made a purchase.

This report was suggested by Egol to be able to track effectiveness of adwords advertisement, affiliate... Once you see that 500$ adwords for X brought 10 sales and 500$ for Y gave you 50 sales, you know you should put more adwords on search Y.