How to turn on persistent urls in WordPress?

[SpaMedica]

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.

[SpaMedica]

Thanks for your help everyone. I'm working on the GCLID attribution now.

[JasmineA]

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.

[max.favilli]

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.

https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/api/

[max.favilli]

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.

[SpaMedica]

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?

[smarttill]

Add SEO Yoast as a plugin tin Wordpress. add this to your functions.php add_filter( 'wpseo_canonical', '__return_false' );

[max.favilli]

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.

[SpaMedica]

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.

[max.favilli]

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.

https://www.google.it/webhp?q=google+analytics+goal+form+submission#q=google+analytics+goal+form+submission

Keep in mind you can use utm_source, utm_campaing, etc... In the links originating the leads, if you control them.

[SpaMedica]

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.

[max.favilli]

I suggest start learning Google Analytics

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1247839?hl=en

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/referral-paths-in-google-analytics/

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3297892?hl=en