How to Track Affiliate Links in WordPress (with Google Analytics)
By tracking your affiliate links, you can find out exactly how users interact with them on your site. With this data, you can optimize your links for better conversions and revenue.
In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll show you how to track affiliate links in WordPress in just 3 steps.
For this, we will be using Google Analytics and a WordPress plugin. So first, we need to take a look at why affiliate link tracking is so important so that you understand why we have chosen this method here.
Why track affiliate links?
Without a doubt, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online . If you have a good amount of regular traffic coming to your WordPress site , you can earn a good sum of money by adding affiliate links on your site.
These links redirect users to product sales pages of sellers with your affiliate ID attached. So, when people buy products through that link, you earn a certain amount of money as a commission.
You can just add random links and hope the money rolls in, but if you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and make a lot of money from it, you need to organize and manage it properly.
Truth be told, affiliate marketing success is not possible without proper data and analytics.
You need real statistics on how your users interact with affiliate links. This will help you optimize your marketing strategy and place links strategically to maximize revenue.
Without this data, you risk losing a lot of revenue that is on the table.
That’s why it’s so important to track your affiliate links. When you track this data, you can do the following really well:
- Get real data on user interaction: You can find out exactly how users interact with your affiliate links. Analyze where people click the most.
- Identify your most profitable links: Find out which links are leading to the most conversions and focus on them.
- See your top converting pages: See which pages are driving the most affiliate sales and optimize them for more revenue.
Simply put, affiliate tracking helps you see hong Kong phone number library how users view and interact with your affiliate links. It provides comprehensive data with which you can optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns and maximize your earnings.
Tracking Your WordPress Affiliate Links in Google Analytics
To track affiliate links, you need Google Analytics , the best web analytics platform available in the market.
It help you track all of your website how to create a file upload form in wordpress – (step by step) traffic and interactions on your website. Affiliate tracking is just one type of metric that Google Analytics tracks.
It is one of the essential marketing tools for any website owner. However, there are two things to keep in mind:
- Connecting your website to Google Analytics is not easy. You need to add tracking code to your website files. If you are a beginner or have no technical knowledge, this can be really complex.
- Setting up affiliate link tracking is not easy in Google Analytics. You need to be an advanced user of the platform.
Luckily, there is an EASY way to use Google Analytics in WordPress: MonsterInsights .
MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress on the web. It simplifies the entire process of using Google Analytics in WordPress.
When you install this plugin, there is a setup wizard you can follow to set up Google Analytics on your site.
If you need help, we have a complete step-by-step guide showing you how to sign up and connect your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account: How to Set Up Google Analytics 4 in WordPress .
It will take about 5-10 minutes. Once your site is connected, Google will start tracking your website data.
Now, before you set up affiliate tracking for your site, sms to data you first need to add and manage your affiliate links properly in WordPress . Therefore, we have divided this tutorial into 3 steps as below:
- Step 1: Manage your affiliate links in WordPress using ThirstyAffiliates
- Step 2: Set Up Affiliate Tracking with MonsterInsights
- Step 3: Viewing Affiliate Link Tracking Reports
Step 1: Manage Your Affiliate Links in WordPress
ThirstyAffiliates is the best affiliate management plugin for WordPress . It allows you to add your affiliate links from one place in your dashboard, organize them by categories, and manage them efficiently.
Most importantly, it allows you to cloak your affiliate links (i.e. transform long, complex affiliate links into short, nice links).
For example, this is what a normal affiliate link looks like:
https://example.com/products/?product_id=123&affiliate_id
Now, you can cloak the link and make it short like the branded URL shown below:
http://www.yoursite.com/recommends/product-name
The main benefit of managing affiliate links with ThirstyAffiliates is that it stores your affiliate links in the backend of your site, so you can find the links easily any time you want to add them to your content. They are searchable by name.
Secondly, link cloaking transforms long, ugly affiliate links into pretty links. It also makes affiliate links look like internal links when they are actually external. This prevents users from seeing the direct affiliate links and increases the chances of getting more clicks. It is also a good practice for SEO ranking.
Best of all, using an affiliate link management plugin allows you to track your affiliate links easily in Google Analytics. MonsterInsights affiliate tracking also uses cloaked links for tracking.
So, your first task is to install ThirstyAffiliates and add your affiliate links to its interface. It is easy to add and manage your affiliate links using this WordPress plugin.
Just paste the affiliate urls here and then add your own unique redirect link.
If you need detailed instructions, check out our tutorial on how to add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates .
Make all your links have the same path. You can also use /refer/product-name or /recommend/product-name, anything that looks nice and is easy to track.
After adding and managing your affiliate links with ThirstyAffiliates, you’re ready to set up affiliate tracking with MonsterInsights.
You can also use an alternative plugin – Pretty Links . It’s easy to quickly add cloaked affiliate links like this one using the “Add New” button.