The most common method of pay per click tracking is using a special URL in your ads.

For example: http://www.yourwebsiteaddress.com/track.php?src=google&term=scented%20candle

The special URL will allow you to determine source of click (in example above, Google) and more importantly term (in example above, "Scented candle").

The software is most typically implemented in either PHP or Perl and stores information about user in MySQL or any of other major databases. The most common information logged is date, time, IP address, session id, referrer, current page and their user agent.

Benefits of PPC tracking

Based on above example of candle business we were able to determine that business was only generating 2 sales per day from Google, however it was generating 18 sales per day via Overture. Because we only generated two sales on Google we are able to determine if it is cost effective to continue advertising with google (e.g. generating a profit or losing money through advertising) or to take our advertising dollars elsewhere.

The primary benefits are:

* Save advertising money by advertising wiser. * The ability to test effectiveness of changes in your ad copy. * Assist in your website layout (e.g. make it easier to navigate and purchase).

Conclusion

Tracking your advertising is beneficial to any business that advertises online, businesses that are big (Bank of America, Monster.com, Capital One, Progressive Auto Insurance) all do it and so do your competitors. Don't let your competition gain an advantage; start tracking your users today! If used right, you will be glad that you did!

A sitemap page is a very good way of giving search engine robot every opportunity to reach your website pages. Since robots click through links of your web pages, make sure that at least your most important pages are included in sitemap; you may even want to include all your pages there, depending on size of your site. Be sure to add a link to sitemap page from each page on your site.

Another important consideration is that of keeping all of your pages within a small number of "clicks" from your top page. Many robots will not follow links more than two or three levels deep, so if your "widgets" page can only be reached from your home page by following multiple links (e.g. home page >> about us page >> products page >> widgets page), robot may not crawl deep enough to get to widgets page.

Testing Your Website For Search Engine Robot Accessibility To get an idea just what search engine robot "sees" on your page, you can look at Sim Spider tool. You may be surprised at how different your site looks to robot. You can find this tool at http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi

You will see text and ALT image text show up in results. If your entire website is built in Flash, you will see nothing at all because robots don't understand Flash movies.

The Bottom Line When it comes to search engine robots, think simply. Lots of good content and text, hyperlinks robots can follow, optimization of your pages, topical links pointing back to your site and a sitemap will help insure best results when robots come visiting.

Resources

SpiderSpotting - Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/spiders.html

Robotstxt.org List of robots and protocols for setting up a robots.txt file. http://www.robotstxt.org/

Spider-Food Tutorials, forums and articles about Search Engine spiders and Search Engine Marketing. http://spider-food.net/

Spiderhunter.com Articles and resources about tracking Search Engine spiders. http://www.spiderhunter.com/

Sim Spider Search Engine Robot Simulator Search Engine World has a spider that simulates what Search Engine robots read from your website. http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi