URLs are the connections between different sites and businesses. If you plan an action with your online partner for promotion of a specified product via a specified landing page, you’ll come at the end to the URL.
In the URL normally you can find all this information:
- what product is promoted
- who is the partner
- is there any special discount
which makes an URL a big deal.
There is even more: URLs, toothpaste and freedom have something in common – once they are let out, its very hard to put them in! If you send it to your partner or branded on a CD-Rom or simply let Google robot find it – you can not change it later.
This may sound a bit too obvoius, but many our online partners came to this decision independently and it was not very obvious for them – you need to be able to control your URLs. Everybody understands that they need some kind of a redirection service.
If you made an URL like http://yourwebsite.com/buy_now.php?product=123&affiliate=345 don’t give it to your partner!
Make another one, like http://yourwebsite.com/redirect.php?redirect=12345 and use some redirection technology to send it to the real one.
Examples of technology can be used for that:
- simple HTML with Refresh META tag (very old, I know)
- URL cloaking services, like tiny url (although you outsource part of your system to an external party, which is not always great)
- mod_rewrite from your Apache (for hardcore coders, who manage their services via ssh only!)
- your own custom solution (if you have a custom web-shop,you can also build your own URL redirection service)
