Google AdWords - Direct Linking Or Landing Page?

Most of the affiliate marketing that I do is organic search traffic, not paid traffic. I try not to rely on sources that require payment in order to drive traffic. That's just my personal budgetary preference, though, since paid traffic does, indeed, work...if you know what you're doing. You can lose your shirt if you make some rookie mistakes.

When starting out with paid traffic, one question that arises is, "Do I direct link to the affiliate page or create my own landing page?"

To create a Google ad, you have to put in both a "destination URL" and a "display URL". The display URL is the one that shows on the ad. The destination URL is the link that the click will actually follow. Google's Terms of Use state that the domain on which the visitor ultimately sees after clicking should match the display URL. So, for example,

Direct linking is when the URL that your Google Ad points to is the one that belongs to the affiliate themselves. For example, if I were creating an add for a product at Clickbank, I can create the ad with a destination URL that points to the Clickbank site, with my affiliate ID, but I MUST set the display URL to the domain that belongs to the affiliate, since that's where the person clicking ends up. This is called direct linking. I'm using my ad to drive traffic directly to the affiliate page.

The main advantage of direct linking is that you don't need any programming experience to build your own landing page, and don't need to take the time or invest the cost in creating your own page. For some folks, it's just easier to create a bunch of ads pointing directly to the affiliate page and let it go.

However, there are three disadvantages of direct linking:
1. ad rotation
2. direct traffic
3. some affiliate products restrict direct linking

Google rotates ads that point to the same display URL. If you and 99 other folks are advertising a specific affiliate product, and are all using direct link, you dilute the number of times your ad will be seen. Google will only return one ad per display URL when a search is performed.

Also, a good number of web users will type in the display URL directly to their browser rather than click an ad. (I have two case studies I'll talk about in another article that prove this.) I'm not sure all the reasons why they do this, but some users are wary of ads. They figure that if the site is legitimate, typing the URL directly will take them there. That means you're losing revenue by sending folks directly to the affiliate without ever having your tracking cookie planted.

Lastly, you need to check with the terms for your specific affiliate product. Some don't let you direct link at all, and others restrict the keywords on which you can bid.

With those factors in mind, Direct Linking is already at a disadvantage over pointing clicks to a landing page of your own. There are several other advantages of using your own landing page which I'll discuss in another article.

George has enjoyed Internet Marketing as a hobby for years. He has introduced several of his friends to it, as well, and created http://www.how-to-make-online-money.com as a reference site for them to use. It is his one-stop dumping ground of all the things he has learned over the years.