Ethical SEO company - Web Designer - Emarketing Consultant - Connecticut: NYC : New Jersey

Question:
We have switched to Joomla 1.5 and want to track some print ads with special URL tracking codes. For example. mysite.com/printad

This is a fairly common thing to do. We want to see how many clicks we get. *Note. We use SEFS on our site.

Answer:

1) Set up a client and a banner in your banner manager. (admin control panel > component > banner)

2) Set up a module tied to the specific banner. Be sure click tracking is ON.

3) Visit the front end, copy the banner URL.

4) Turn off the module

5) Set up a .htaccess redirect 301 of the tracking URL and point it the banner click SEF.

It should looks something like this:

redirect 301 /printad http://www.mysite.com/click-banner/168908dd3227b835.html

This will redirect your special print advertising tracking code to the banner click URL which records the click and redirects the user to the specific landing page.

6) Test, check clicks against number of tests, reset clicks, print your ad in traditional media.

*To really get a sense of your print advertising, we highly recommend utilizing some kind of special offer that is ONLY available in that particular ad. Of course, this is NOT always possible and the above solution should give you an idea of how traffic unique to that particular print ad.

*Note, it you are NOT using SEF, you still need to use .htaccess for the redirect.