Differentiate Paid vs Organic Listings?

[phunklord]

Hi All,

We are having difficulty distinguishing paid search traffic that routes through doubleclick from natural search traffic that comes direct from the search engine site. In other words, in our analytical tracking package clicks from organic search have the same referral info as those from paid search. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to effectively address this?

[Duncan Pollock]

The fast (i.e. quick and dirty) answer lies in having two different landing pages, one for organic search clicks and another for PPC clicks.
This isn't altogether as easy as it sounds but, as long as you can track sales/enquiries from the specifically identified visitors, you'll at least start to get an idea of the success ratio of each kind of search.
Needless to say, you do have to assume that visitors are using the same keyword phrases to find you -- and in your PPC campaigns to arrange things so that this will be the case. Otherwise you're going to be comparing apples with oranges.
You also have to be careful about duplicate content. By one means or another, the two landing pages need to be worded quite distinctly and, like as not, one kind of visitor shouldn't end up being able to reach the page that the other kind sees.
Some of the Web Analytic programs offer ways to keep things separate for you, and WebCEO is one example.
But if all else fails, you can simply ask your visitors which route they took -- although the problem here is that many of them won't remember!

Duncan

[Reg DCP]

Could you use a ? at the end of your paid links?
This would distinguish them form the organic.
Edit: You can even type something after the ? which will be tracked by your stats.
EG: http://virussnitch.com/store/index.p...om-webproworld

[phunklord]

Thanks for the replies Duncan & Reg. I was hoping to avoid having to go through and attach string data at the end of each click-thru because I've got a boatload of keywords out there. Seems like that's gonna be my quickest solution for the now, though. Thanks again guys.

pl

[Reg DCP]

Thanks for the replies Duncan & Reg. I was hoping to avoid having to go through and attach string data at the end of each click-thru because I've got a boatload of keywords out there. Seems like that's gonna be my quickest solution for the now, though. Thanks again guys.

pl

Good luck m8.. let us know how you make out in the paid vs organic battle?