What is link tracking?

What is link tracking and is it worth learning more about it?

In this post, I will try to answer these questions. But for all people who are serious about making money online, the answer is obvious and clear.

Link tracking is fundamental to affiliate marketing and paid advertising campaigns.

When promoting links from affiliate programs you probably use many methods, ways, and channels to reach potential customers.

So you should know which campaign is the most effective and which link is the most clicked.

Whether it’s a new campaign you’ve just created on your Facebook fan page or a landing page you’re promoting with paid ads to get new leads.  



Tracking the number of clicks and conversions is important to make sure that you are reaching the right audience with your product.

This is where link tracking and appropriate tools for effective measurement of the number and quality of clicks on your links come in handy.

What is link tracking?
What is link tracking?

How does link tracking work?

The working rule is simple. When a user clicks on a tracking link, the user’s connection first goes through the tracking service. 

It records the click information such as location, device, and time and then redirects the user’s browser to the destination.

This whole process is instantaneous and invisible.

How does link tracking work?
How does link tracking work?

Why is link tracking important?

The URL is one of the most important things in online marketing. Whether you’re running a blog, a campaign in the form of email marketing, or have just launched another social media campaign, the link is what connects your users to the offer you’re promoting.

I wrote more about why an affiliate link is one of the most effective tools for making money online here.

With the ability to accurately track links, you have a complete picture of what actions a user takes after clicking on them.

The analytical data you get this way is often essential to see if your strategy is working.

If not – then you have full insight into all the information coming from the clicks and you can consciously make corrections and adjustments to a given campaign.

Email link tracking

As you probably already know, one of the most effective ways to promote products is email marketing.

A properly prepared message not only helps to inspire trust in your brand or person but also often causes an undecided person to become your potential customer.

You need to know that most people who visit your website are not ready to buy your product.

Therefore, it is important to build your contact list by getting new leads and to know who from your list is most likely to click on the links in the messages you send.

Link tracking tools will provide you with all the necessary information – you will know who and when clicked on a given link and which message has the highest conversion rate.

The benefits of link tracking

As you already know tracking links are used to manage and measure the effectiveness and performance of marketing activities, channels, and campaigns. 

Link tracking is always recommended when you are driving traffic to your site from an external channel.

By this I mean banner ads, PPC campaigns, email, and social media.

The key benefits of link tracking are:

  •  great insight into where your audience and customers are coming from – in addition to user geolocation, you’ll also find out if the most purchases and conversions for your site are coming from organic traffic, social media, or maybe from paid ads,
  • you can quickly check the quantity and quality of traffic from a given source and calculate the ROI,
  • at the same time, you can track and analyze relevant information for many campaigns you launch – each tracking link is unique and data is reported for each link separately,
  • you can make a quick and conscious decision about whether it’s worth investing further resources in a given marketing campaign,
  • link tracking allows you to quickly determine the click-through rate of your email marketing,
  • if you are running paid marketing campaigns, you can control your budget and check whether you actually received as many clicks on the link as you paid for,
  • thanks to link tracking you can quickly check which marketing channels really work,
  • you can quickly and effectively test and compare different campaigns.

How to use a tracking link?

Tracking links can be used almost anywhere. Depending on how you prefer to promote your affiliate links, you can use tracking in:

  • Facebook ads and other social media
  • email marketing
  • display advertising
  • Google Search Ads
  • blog posts

What information about users does link tracking tools provide?

We can say that with this type of tool you get almost complete information about your users and the traffic they generate.

Thus, apart from the number of clicks on a given link, you will have at your disposal such data as:

  • user IP
  • country
  • city
  • language 
  • browser used by the user
  • the exact time of the click
  • the keywords after which the click was made
  • user devices
  • and many others…

You can read more about the power of link tracking tools in this article.

Link tracking software

Today, there are many tools available to track your online marketing activities.

These tools use better and better algorithms, which makes the information and data you receive increasingly accurate. 

In addition, some of these tools allow you to protect against unwanted clicks. You can simply set your own rules about which clicks are allowed and which are not.

If you haven’t decided which tool to use to track your links, I encourage you to try the already tested ones offered by ClickMagic and Clickmeter.

Link tracking software
Link tracking software

If you want to see how these tools work and what link tracking looks like in practice try the 14 trial version offered by Clickmagic.

You will quickly see that these tools will help you better understand the behavior of users clicking on your links, and the information they provide will allow you to achieve greater than average results in your marketing campaigns.

Try Clickmagic

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