This guide goes over how to organize affiliate links as your WordPress website gets bigger and more complex.
It may feel easier to just generate affiliate links on the spot to monetize something that you're working on, but it's important to slow down and organize them in a systematic way, so it's easier to find, edit or delete links.
Centralize Links In One Spot
To effectively promote the same offers across multiple spots on your website, it's advisable to create a single affiliate link and distribute it throughout the site. This approach makes it easier to access and edit the link URL and link attributes such as follow or nofollow, as it can be done in just one spot.
The reasons are that offers may change, products may go out of stock, affiliate program for that specific product may shut down.
Many beginners make the mistake of placing identical affiliate links in numerous spots (20-100) on the website. This can turn into a nightmare when changes need to be made or links need to be removed. Therefore, it's important to use a centralized approach for better management of your affiliate links.
For WordPress website, we highly recommend using link shortener or individual product pages to store links.
Categorize Affiliate Links
Here are the instructions for tagging affiliate link clicks as goals inside Google Analytics:
- Login to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the "Admin" section.
- From there, click on "Goals" under the "View" column.
- Click on the "+New Goal" button to create a new goal.
- Choose "Custom" as the goal type and click "Continue".
- Give your goal a name, such as "Affiliate Link Clicks".
- In the "Type" section, select "Event" and click "Continue".
- In the "Category" field, enter a name that describes the affiliate program or network you're using.
- In the "Action" field, enter a name that describes the specific link or offer you're promoting.
- In the "Label" field, you can add additional details about the link or offer, such as the product name or ID.
- In the "Value" field, you can assign a specific value to the goal if desired.
- Click "Save" to create the goal.
Once the goal is created, you can track the performance of your affiliate links by navigating to the "Conversions" section of Google Analytics and selecting your goal from the dropdown menu.
This will allow you to see how many clicks your affiliate links are generating without monetary value attached.
Using Google Tag Manager To Tag Click Events
Here are the instructions for setting up click tracking in Google Tag Manager:
Login to your Google Tag Manager account and navigate to the "Tags" section.
Click on "New" to create a new tag.
Choose "Click" as the tag type and give your tag a name, such as "Affiliate Link Clicks".
In the "Trigger" section, choose "Click - All Elements".
In the "Fire On" section, choose "Some Clicks".
In the "Conditions" section, set the following filters:
- Click URL contains: [Enter the URL or domain of your affiliate link]
- Click URL does not contain: [Enter any URLs or domains that you want to exclude]
This is where you can put link shortener URL or raw affiliate link URL. i highly recommend just using uRLs that are easily recognizable to you.
Click "Save" to create the tag.
Next, create a new trigger by clicking on "Triggers" and selecting "New".
Choose "Custom Event" as the trigger type and give it a name, such as "Affiliate Link Clicks".
In the "Trigger Configuration" section, set the following parameters:
- Event name: [Enter a name that describes the link or offer you're promoting]
- This trigger fires on: Clicks
Click "Save" to create the trigger.
Finally, associate the trigger with the tag by going back to the "Tags" section and selecting your tag.
In the "Triggering" section, choose the trigger you just created and click "Save".
Once you've completed these steps, Google Tag Manager will begin tracking clicks on your affiliate links and sending that data to Google Analytics. Clicks can be tracked under Behavior > Events