How to turn on persistent urls in WordPress?
-
I'm using an appointment form on my website and I have the option to add a referral url to form submissions so that i know which pages the form submission came from.
I need to be able to distinguish between organically generated form submissions and those that come in via AdWords. If referral url shows the AdWords tracking code i know the form submission came in from AdWords.
My problem is that when a visitor comes in after clicking an ad and then visits another page on my website that AdWords tracking code disappears from the url. I was told that there was a way to turn on persistent urls in WordPress but I can't figure out how to do it.
I'm assuming that if i turn persistent urls on the AdWords tracking code will remain on every subsequent url that they visit on my website. Is this true?
Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.
-
Thanks for your help everyone. I'm working on the GCLID attribution now.
-
Max is definitely right that you need code. The most common attribution method is last non direct. The easiest way to determine PPC v SERPs is to try to grab the GCLID. If you end up growing your business and/or merging this information back to AdWords from the offline conversion tracking option they offer you will need the GCLID.
-
This is just going to disable yoast canonical url, I don't see how could it help passing query string parameters through the user visit path.
-
You can use either one or another, cookie is persistent through different visits (and last as long as you decide it to last), while the session variable last only for the current user session. Depends on the attribution window you want to use.
-
Thanks for your help guys. I've tried using your method smarttill but unfortunately it didn't work.
I will try it your way Max but how do i log where the visitor is coming from with a cookie or a session variable?
-
Add SEO Yoast as a plugin tin Wordpress. add this to your functions.php add_filter( 'wpseo_canonical', '__return_false' );
-
You need coding, when the visitor land on the entry page of your site take the utm_source or utm_campaign from the url and log where he is coming from, in a cookie, session variable, etc... Then pass it through on form submission. You can use header, footer or any wordpress piece of code used in every page.
You can't keep the query string through the visitor path unless you code too, and it's more complex, and I don't believe you can find a wordpress plugin doing that. For sure is not something you can do with a standard wordpress installation.
-
Thanks for your help Max but i don't need to know how many leads came in through the different referral sources. I already know that. What i do need to do is identify each form submission as coming from organic traffic or ppc.
Like i've mentioned earlier, the leads coming in through the form need to be logged into a client management software so i need to take the contact information of the form submitter and enter it in the system as coming from organic or ppc. This is done to track ROI.
-
Maybe I am missing something, but form submission is either PPC or organic because the visitor is coming from PPC or Organic. So if you define a goal in analytics for the form submission, triggered either by url match or javascript, you can later check in analytics how many lead were generated through PPC or organic checking the goals per channel/referral/campaign.
Keep in mind you can use utm_source, utm_campaing, etc... In the links originating the leads, if you control them.
-
I know analytics. I can see referral traffic and goal paths and all that. What I need is to be able to attribute individual form submissions to either organic or ppc traffic.
Each form submission is a lead. Each lead needs to be logged in a client management software so in order to properly attribute a lead to either ppc or organic traffic i need to use persistent urls so that the referral url field in my form reflects the traffic source vie google tracking code in the url.
I hope someone here can help shed some light on this. Thanks.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page Tracking using Custom URLs - is this viable?
Hi Moz community! I’ll try to make this question as easy to understand as possible, but please excuse me if it isn’t clear. Just joined a new team a few months ago and found out that on some of our most popular pages we use “custom URLs” to track page metrics within Google Analytics. NOTE: I say “custom URLs” because that is the best way for me to describe them. As an example: This page exists to our users: http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Ram_HD/2012/photos-interior/ But this is the URL we have coded on the page: cars-trucks/used-cars/reviews/2012-Ram-HD/photos-interior/ (within the custom variance script labeled as “var l_tracker=” ) It is this custom URL that we use within GA to look up metrics about this page. This is just one example of many across our site setup to do the same thing Here is a second example: Available page to user: http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Cadillac_ATS/2015/ Custom “var l_tracker=” /cars-trucks/2015-Cadillac-ATS/overview/ NOTE: There is a small amount of fear that the above method was implemented years ago as a work-around to a poorly structured URL architecture. Not validated, but that is a question that arose. Main Questions: Is the above implementation a normal and often used method to track pages in GA? (coming from an Omniture company before – this would not be how we handled page level tracking) Team members at my current company are divided on this method. Some believe this is not a proper implementation and are concerned that trying to hide these from Google will raise red flags (i.e. fake URLs in general = bad) I cannot find any reference to this method anywhere on the InterWebs - If method is not normal: Any recommendations on a solution to address this? Potential Problems? GA is currently cataloguing these tracking URLs in the Crawl Error report. Any concerns about this? The team wants to hide the URLs in the Robots.txt file, but some team members are concerned this may raise a red flag with Google and hurt us more than help us. Thank you in advance for any insight and/or advice. Chris
Reporting & Analytics | | usnseomoz0 -
Wordpress site with increase number of Crawl(400 response Code) errors in Others section of GWT
I have a wordpress site http://muslim-academy.com/I check in Google Webmasters tool today and I see the increase number of errors in Others area of Google webmaster Tool.The error code is 400http://muslim-academy.com/%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%B3-%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B5%D8%B1-2/%D8%B3%D9%....%3Cbr%20/%3E________________%3Cbr%20/%3E___________%3Ca%20href=?lang=zhOne of the example link of this error.Can you guide me why the number of errors are increasing and how to fix the existing errors.
Reporting & Analytics | | csfarnsworth0 -
Page Views for a List of URL's (Excel & Analytics)
I've been playing around with a few excel plugins trying to get the visit count for over 350 different URL's on the same website. I cant seem to find a function that can do this. Can anyone advise a work around or a way i can achieve this? Greg
Reporting & Analytics | | AndreVanKets0 -
Wordpress SEO vs Regular Site SEO
Hey Mozzers I'm building a Wordpress-powered site (self hosted on different domain). I know there are different plug-ins and whatnot for Wordpress SEO, but what exactly am I getting myself into? Am I required to use these plug-ins even if I already know how to do regular SEO on-page coding, or are they mainly dumbed-down tools for mom-bloggers to use? Am I still able to use Google Analytics as I am with a regular site?
Reporting & Analytics | | Travis-W
What else is there to think about? Thanks!0 -
How to Turn Google Analytics Into Your Own Rank Tracker Using Custom Variables
I followed the instructions here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables, but cannot see the report in Analytics under "Custom Variables". As I dont know JS syntax, I assume the code is wrong. I just added dohertyjf's code under my normal tracking code. Can someone tell me if and where the error is? | | Much obliged!
Reporting & Analytics | | zeepartner0 -
Strange 404 Error URL
Can anyone help determine how a URL like "www.mycompany.com/lago_www.bad-nsfw-content.com" would appear on the "not found" crawl error list in Google Webmaster Tools? The "www.bad-nsfw-content" site has nothing to do with our company and I don't how it would get associated with our site.
Reporting & Analytics | | pbhatt0 -
Does using Google URL Builder override original source in Google Analytics?
During a free trial on Tatango, we send daily emails to customers to give them advice, resources, etc. We started using Google URL Builder http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 to create individual links in each of these emails, but when the customer purchases a subscription now, the source in GA isn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. they are all showing up as the source we created using the URL builder for each email. Does Google URL builder override the original source in Google Analytic?
Reporting & Analytics | | Tatango0 -
Do I need to turn off custom results or empty my cache before using the SEOMOZ Pro Rank checker?
I'm getting unusual swings in SERPS ranks from one day to another (I had several keywords ranked in top ten go to the the third or fourth page in a week). I knwo that there's always variation because of localized and custom search, but this seems to be something more.
Reporting & Analytics | | bbelgard0