[contentbox bgcolor=’f2f2f2′ border=’999999′ borderwidth=3 corners=10]This is a guest post written by Dawn Rotarangi.[/contentbox]
As you build more pages with links to Amazon products, inevitably, as either Amazon or the retailer withdraw or move products, some of the url addresses will either change or disappear.
The link will then go to an Amazon 404 – Document Not Found.
These links are leaking money from your web site!
On a small site with a few carefully tended pages this may never be a problem. You’ll see what has happened and correct it immediately.
But on a large website with many unmonitored links this can become a nightmare if you do not know how to find these links that have been broken as a product is shifted or withdrawn.
Image links reveal when they are broken – text links do not. They look just fine and you don’t realize that they are no longer bringing in money.
How to find if a link is going to an Amazon 404
I’ll use this site on Charm Bracelets as an example. You can see it is a static website that sells charm jewellery. It has hundreds, maybe thousands, of Amazon links. Clearly it is not built according to the Amazonian Profit Plan, but is a trouble free little web site so long as the product links are kept updated.
Here is how to do that.
Each morning log in to your Amazon account.
Where it says Month to date click on Yesterday.
Underneath where it says Orders Summary click on View full report. Make sure you’re clicking on the View full report for the Orders Summary not the Earnings Summary.
This will show you a page something like this.
We all love to focus on the sales we have made – but below them there is a section called Items with no orders. Now don’t turn away from that in disappointment. That list is your friend. You can learn a lot by seeing what people have clicked on but not bought.
However, for our purposes you can also see any links that are broken because an item has been shifted or removed from Amazon.
So click on that little downward pointing arrow beside the words Show all items.
This will show you a page something like this.
Now see those 3 items at the top of the list that are shown by their ASIN rather than the product name.
(Title not available) B003ZZXL7Q
(Title not available) B000GG0GUM
(Title not available) B0045EVGAA
Those are broken links. Someone has clicked upon them and got the dreaded 404 – Document Not Found. So up until that point you had a potential sale going down – suddenly you have nothing.
In fact, you have worse than nothing. You have an annoyed shopper. I know that when I follow links that don’t work or don’t take me to where they promised I feel annoyed and cheated and promptly leave.
So maybe your customer will take Amazon’s hint and go to the home page and continue looking. But is your affiliate link still embedded? I don’t know but I don’t want to take that chance.
And maybe they’ll return to your web site and continue shopping but again, I don’t want to take that chance.
What I want to do is fix that broken link just as quick as I can so that once again I have happy shoppers. I’ve lost that potential sale but if I fix it now I won’t lose anymore.
If you’ve never looked in that Items with no orders list before, or if you’ve looked but did not understand the significance of these items listed under their ASIN numbers, it can be a bit of a shock.
If the link is “healthy” then Amazon list it under the title of the product. If the link took your customer to the Amazon 404 then it is listed under its ASIN.
I’ve shared this secret with people who have discovered they had hundreds of non-functioning links!
Right – you’ve discovered these profit leaching links – now what to do about them
Simply change them for links to other products. Do a keyword search and find a similar product that you can sell. You will probably have to change some of the text on the page depending on if that page was written just for that one product.
On a shopping site, a page such as this one about Kabbalah Bracelets only needs to have a word or two changed, insert another link and it’s done.
On a page where you have carefully selected the product and written according to the Amazonian Plan you’ll need to make more extensive changes.
BUT if you change the words on the page to fit another model of the same product you get to keep all those back links that you’ve sweated blood, tears and midnight oil to get for this page. Whichever model of Panasonic cordless drill (to use Paula and Wanda’s famous example) you write about, most of those back links will be great for any other model of Panasonic cordless drill.
In fact, many of those back links will be perfect for any model of drill.
And at the very worst – they’re still back links even if the anchor text isn’t exactly what you would choose. How many of us have done the rounds of blog commenting where you end up with hundreds of backlinks anchored to your name? So don’t discard the page even if you end up having to put a hedge trimmer on it. Change the Title of the page and keep the url with all those precious back links.
Not a perfect solution, I know, but this is real life in the affiliate world. Retailers change links. Retailers remove products. There is nothing you can do about that. Salvage what you can from the situation.
How to find that broken link on your own website
Now you may have spotted one flaw in what I’ve suggested. The problem is that if you have a large site you have to actually find these links on your website. If you have hundreds or thousands of pages spread over several websites this can be very time consuming.
Here is how to find them. On the Amazon site request to see your orders by tracking ID. See where it says Combined Reports? Remove the tick and go through your various IDs until you find the ID where the product shows under its ASIN in the Items with no orders. (I’m assuming you have a different tracking ID for each of your web sites. If you haven’t, rectify that now.)
We’ve tracked it down to which website it is on – now we have to track it down to the page.
StatCounter is your friend, folks!
It can be added to any WordPress blog as a plugin and it will quickly and effortlessly lead you to the page you want. It can also be added to most other sites.
Over in your StatCounter interface you will see in the list of Statistics on the left of the page, one called Exit Links.
Click on that and you’ll see there are about a dozen pages of exit links there. Go to the final page listed. I say the final page because the links are listed according to how many clicks they have had so the problem link is amongst the ones that have only had one click on them (if you check them daily). Work back, running your eye down the right hand side of the links until you find the one you want.
Click on that little downward pointing arrow and it will take you to the StatCounter drill down page.
On this page click on the magnifying glass to the left of the link and it will take you to the page that reveals all.
This page will tell you which of YOUR pages that link was on.
And although it might have taken you five minutes to read how to do this, one you’ve done it once or twice, you’ll find you can track these broken/changed urls very quickly. Within a minute of discovering that a retailer has removed a product I know which page it was on and will be replacing it with another product.
One sale might have been lost but if you follow this tip you’ll never lose a second sale through a link that doesn’t go where you want.
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Thanks for publishing my guest post, Paula and Wanda. Certainly hope it helps someone track down which links are going to the Amazon 404.
No problem Dawn, you did a great job with it.
Usually I’m not too keen on guest posts but this is a real gem. I’ve been running the Amazon affiliate program for close to a year now and didn’t even think about this. I followed your instructions and sure enough, I had several dead affiliate links. Thanks so much for the tip Dawn, very helpful article!!
Glad I could help, Dan. Sometimes we’re so busy looking at the sales that we never think to look at the Items with no orders.
Thanks so much for this Dawn, excellent post. I only ever look for sales and don’t pay much attention to anything else. I had a look just now over the last 5 months and I have a lot of these links. I have 3 that say “Title not found”. For the rest of those listed here, it shows that actual name of the product and some I click on and the link is valid and for some I get a 404. For those where the link is valid, do I conclude that people clicked on the aff link but did not buy?
That’s right, Tara – if the link is valid, someone has clicked on your link but not bought. And for most of us that is the norm. People look more often than they buy. Just as they buy the strangest things that you were not even promoting.
I promote health products and jewelery but I’ve sold everything from kayaks to sex toys!
Dawn, this post is a real gem, thanks. I followed your instructions and didn’t find any dead links, but now I’ve put this on my to-do list for the beginning of every month!
So pleased you didn’t find any dead links, Joy. You’re one of the lucky ones! Glad you found it helpful.
Thanks this is great information. I found I had this very issue just the other day and didn’t know what it was about. Now I know that I can fix it. Thank You!
I know what a headache it can be, Shirley if you have many of these. Happy to have helped you discover how to fix them.
This is such a frustrating problem for me. Sometimes, doing a Google search for the ASIN will tell me what product it is, which gives me a good idea where to get started.
Another thing that has worked has been using the Broken Link Checker plug-in for wordpress – it pulls up those bad links on my blog quickly. Since I use “Pretty Links” for all my linking, I just need to change the link once, and all my pretty links will be automatically updated.
Kelly, that sounds like a wonderful widget. We all need help to stay on top of broken links. Thanks for sharing it.
Boy it’s the small things that erode our success! Success is in the details and the maintenance of those little matters that matter. I never even gave this broken link thing a thought.
Thanks for the guest post (Dawn) and for having a place like this blog that shows how much you (Paula and Wanda) care about our continued success.
Buck, I’m just grateful that Paula and Wanda have this blog where we can pool ideas that work for all of us. Glad you found it useful.
I was shocked to see how many dead links I had. So I guess I got me some fixin to do!
Cathy – I feel for you! I shared this with a friend who discovered 50-60 dead links. But the encouraging thing is now you know how to check for them and what do to about it. Knowledge is power! Good luck with fixing them links.
It’s amazing how many dead links there are. Wanda normally looks after the dead links on our sites but she is quite unwell at the moment so it’s my job I guess. I just went in and noticed just over 50 of them…noooo!!
It’s a battle keeping up with them on big sites. Send love to Wanda from all your “groupies”!
This is a fantastic write up Dawn,
You have really detailed the process as well as obviously highlighting the issue in the first place.
This is yet another reason why I love WPZon Builder plugin so much, because, so long as you set the cache correctly it will keep all the links and products up to date.
Still, I have many sites that do not utilise the plugin so I will be def. checking them when I get a chance.
Thanks for the detailed post Dawn, and thanks Paula and Wanda for having her here.
Tweeted and shared :)
Thank you for the kind words, Alex.
Any products such WPZon Builder that do this for you certainly eliminate the headache that broken links cause. I sometimes wonder if retailers understand what a problem they cause when they shift products about willy-nilly. I left one CJ retailer simply because he seemed to give products a new url each week!
Forget musical chairs – this was musical urls!
Very interesting and informative guest post. Thanks for sharing a method for cleaning up those links, Dawn!
You’re welcome Tammy!
Thanks, Dawn – really learned a thing or four. :)
I still have a lot to learn, clearly – but your tips already put money back into my pocket. Thanks for the help!
Glad I could help, James. And isn’t money back in the pocket what it is all about!
Hmmm…when I click on the “item not available” it redirects to another Amazon page for the same product…and when I check these links on my sites they do the same thing – so these aren’t invalid links for me. Has anyone else found this?
You’re one of the lucky ones, Marie. Sometimes Amazon does a redirect. Occasionally I have that but most often they go straight to the 404. And sometimes it redirects for awhile and then stops so my motto is change them to the right url.
Ah thanks – that’s interesting that they do it for a little while. I shall keep an eye on them – thank you :)
Definitely an article I’ll need to read twice. Thanks for taking the time to be so thorough. :)
My pleasure, Dennis.
I believe it was Kelly above that mentioned the Broken Link Checker plugin for WP.
The BLC will identify your broken links and if you desire, send you an email when it finds a broken or removed link. It is easy enough then to find the particular link since the plugin identifies the location for you.
This plugin works for Amazon links as well as any other links.
On instruction you can give the plug in is to mark the link in such a way that search engines will not follow the broken link before you get it corrected.
Kelly, that Broken Link plug-in sounds like a gift from heaven for affiliate marketers who have a Word Press site.
Apologies, Wendell – got the name wrong! It’s almost lunch time here in New Zealand and I’ve been at the computer since 6am. Must be time for lunch! Or perhaps a snooze in my rocking chair!:)
Thank you for this much needed information. I spent all day correcting these problems on my sites, but before I read this post I had no clue I needed to.
I do have one question, if you please, under the list of items with no orders, what do the highlighted items signify?
Wanda and Paula, thank you for providing all of this amazing and necessary information to those of us in need. I have been reading your blog just over a year now, and have never left the site without finding something I needed to know or finding the answer to a question I’ve had.
Glad that you have them back under control, Wanda.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by the highlighted items in that list? In my list they show in different colors as to whether it is a link that I have clicked on recently. If I’ve clicked on it in my recent history then instead of being a blue link it is a brownish color.
But I don’t have any highlighted. Perhaps it is that change of color that you meant. That simply indicates you have visited that link recently.
Thanks Dawn, you did clear that up for me, and yes they do change colors after you click on them.
It was my wishful thinking that those might be orders that hadn’t been processed yet.
I never really thought about this issue, Dawn. I just use some Amazon affiliate links on my site, so I don’t have hundreds of links to worry about. That’s likely going to change this summer, so I’m glad to have a heads up on this potential issue.
I currently use the Broken Links plugin for WordPress to monitor this. Do you know if there is any issue with using this plugin to catch these broken links?
Brad, I don’t have any WordPress sites with many Amazon links so am not familiar with the Broken Links plugin. It sounds wonderful! The charm site that I used as an example is a static site so needs to be done “by hand” so to speak.
In your situation I would definitely try it. The more you can automate these processes the better.
Thanks, Dawn. I think it will if it’s a 404 error, but just wasn’t sure. It’s a great plugin, and has saved me from a ton of broken links as sites drop off the blogosphere.
Thanks Dawn
I have just checked my Amazon report for the month to date and found that I have three broken links.
I am now going to follow through your process to identify and resolve them.
Thanks
Richard
You’re welcome, Richard. Links are money so always good to get them sorted.
Fantastic post Dawn! I was thinking at first that I’d have to manually go through the links to make sure they work but you made it nice and easy for me. I DID find one link that wasn’t working, so thanks!
That’s great that you found it, Bethany.
Hi Dawn
In total I found six broken links from my websites – two of which had been clicked 50+ times.
I have rectified the problems on my websites, and also I wrote a quick article on my blog and pointed readers to this article here.
Thanks again
Richard
50 plus times,eh! Ouch!
The thing is, Richard, you’ve found them, you’ve corrected the problem and now you know how to find any in the future. It isn’t going to happen again on that scale.
I check mine everyday – I’m in looking at my Amazon stats and it only takes a second to check that “Items with no orders”. So if there is one there I correct and I’m done with it.
And appreciate the link over to this post. Wanda and Paula have so much helpful info on anything to do with Amazon that your readers will bless you for it.
Thanks Dawn,
I have referred back to this post a few times since i first read it. This is great information to have.
Glad you found it useful, Ruth
hi everyone,
maybe there is another idea how to find broken links – if you are using wordpress there is the wordpress broken link checker you can install free. helpful but you need to use it with open eyes because it someone shows up links which are actually fine but it gives you an idea what is going wrong on your site.
You’re right, Monja, there is a plugin for people who use WordPress. I think that the number of plugins available for WordPress make it a great content management system. Thanks for pointing it out.
Hi guys,
I promote Screwfix, a big DIY supplier in the UK and they recently underwent a major site overhaul, changing their directory structure….OMG, every single link broken.
As a result I also totally endorse the wordpress http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/ which saved the day.
It just sits there quietly in the background making sure all those links point to where they are supposed to.
Ian – the more I hear about the wordpress plugin, the more I like the sound of it! Anything that saves time has to be good.
Oh my goodness. I never knew about the broken link report. Checked on mine and found one. Thank you very much for your post!
Glad to help, Diana. :)
Hi there, nice guest post about the expired product. I have a question and wondering if you can shed some lights. Often that when choosing a product in amazon, I found out that the product that I want to promote is in stock, but stated as “Only 3 (or n number) left in stock — order soon.”
I wonder if this is the indication that Amazon is going to remove the product soon (that will result in 404)? Can I still promote it or should I opt for other similar product?
This post is really inspiring as I’ve never take a serious look at 404 errors in my sites. Thanks for the article!
Not sure how much you can read into that statement, Ken. Sometimes they add something about “we don’t know when or if we will get it back in” – THAT statement would certainly keep me from promoting a product.
I would think that a top selling product should never be in short supply – do some retailers add that statement about only x number left to “encourage” the consumer to buy?
Because you’re going to put quite a bit of work into writing a great review, I’d be a bit inclined to watch the product for a week or two and see how the numbers change. That would perhaps clarify whether the product is one that is going to be discontinued.
I think this may be an Amazon marketing technique to get you to buy. We have seen this so many times that we just ignore it now. That’s not to say that at some point the product may no longer be in stock but in most cases we have found that not to be the case.
Thanks Dawn and Paula! Your answers has poured me with light of ideas and hopes! :)
Well, I do personally believe that no merchant in this world would want to lose their money because of failing in stocking popular product.
I guess I’ll try to promote them out and see if it’s really short in stock or not. This kind of Amazon marketing technique is kind of a double-edge sword/one stone two birds solution. It helps urging the buyer to make fast decision, and at the same time to discourage *dumb* marketer (like me :) ) to put them aside so they can make more money.
Well, well…
Just the other day I was looking at my stats in my wp admin dashboard as I tend to do, and I always click on the link that shows is most clicked on. I clicked on the link in my wp admin stats area and it led me to a broken “Product not Found” page. Yuck!
Luckily it was early in the morning and the link was only clicked once that day, but still I had no way of tracking which link it was. Till now. Awesome tip on finding dead Amazon affiliate links in your blog. Am going to Amazon dashboard right now – to find my dead links and clean them up.
Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Greg
Greg, Where do you find which link is most clicked on in your wp admin dashboard?
Hi, Cathy:
I have the wp stats plugin which is a fully featured stats wordpress plugin. You can download it via the Wp repository. See link to it below.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats
Hope this helps you find YOUR most clicked on link.
Cheers!
Duh! I actually have that plugin but I was only looking at the graph on the dashboard. I didn’t realize if you click the “View All” button you can get the clicks and lots more details.
Glad to help, Greg. As affiliate marketers NOTHING is more painful than finding a link that does not go to the product!
Dawn;
Thank you for this information. I had no idea about checking links at Amazon. I am also most grateful for the tip about the broken link checker. We have just moved a site into a WordPress content management system from another system. We knew that within the revised site that there were broken links but we had no idea how to easily find them. This plugin has been a godsend and has saved us hours of searching. I love the fact that they email you about broken links.
I tried putting the Statscounter on one of my sites but somehow I was unable to install it properly. If you have more information about this I would be very interested.
Thank you.
Stat counter is normally fairly straight forward. There are instructions for putting it on a WordPress site as well instructions for putting it on a number of different types of websites. I wonder if maybe you read the wrong instructions.
However, if you’ve got the WordPress plugin for checking links then you really don’t need the Statcounter way. I use it because the charm site is not on WordPress.
So long as you keep an eye on your links one way or another, you’ll be fine. :)
Hi Dawn:
Thank you for an eye opening post. I have been having trouble with my conversion rate and I am very concerned whether this is caused by broken links or not and I have no idea how to check it. Thanks to you now I know. I found 6 broken links :( and I will fix them now.
One other thing that concerns me is that although I saw the 6 broken links, I still have 500+ active links that people clicked (one even has 66 clicks on it), yet no conversion. What could I be doing wrong?
The website that got 66 clicks on 1 product link is a targeted niche for baby cribs. So I’m not sure what else I could be doing wrong. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ana
Glad I could help with finding those broken links, Ana.
About your conversion rate – 66 clicks without a sale is not unusual – people often talk about a 1% conversion rate. However, if you’re following the advise in the Amazonian Profit Plan then you should be getting better than that.
Go back and reread it. Make sure you haven’t forgotten some important point. For example, do all those products have a good “star” rating on Amazon? I link to many products from pages I had already written and some of them are to products that have not been reviewed by buyers. Those products never sell as well as products chosen according to the guidelines that Paula and Wanda give.
The best advise I can give is that if you want to achieve a particular result then closely follow someone who has already achieved it. So if you want to get sales like Paula and Wanda do then follow their advise to the letter.
Good luck with it Ana.
Ana, you might want to take a look at our latest post about conversion rates here:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2011/06/11/you-have-the-traffic-so-why-arent-you-converting/
Awesome post. You had me logging in and following along with the post. Luckily no 404s so far but thanks for this “heads up”. I had never noticed the Items with no orders tab, so that will be looked at regularly from now on. Ta muchly!
Amazon really haven’t made the invalid links obvious on their site nor have they made them easy to fix. I’m not sure why since they are the ones that are losing out when the link goes to a ‘product not found’ page.
thank you for the great advice.
I’m still holding on. I’ve got many clicks and still no sale, but I’m positive that I’m almost there. Thanks guys for being such an inspiration :)
Your site looks great Ana. Just work on those reviews a little more. You want as much detail in them as possible. Just think about what you would want to see in a review if you were thinking about buying a product. You need to be as helpful as possible. Also make the reviews more personal and add your opinion. You don’t have to own the product to give your opinion – you just need to do a lot of research. Remember that you only need to focus on a handful of reviews at any one time. This means you can put all your attention into those reviews and know those products like the back of your hand. The more you know about a product, the better your reviews will be and therefore the better your conversion rates.
Also have a read of this post:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2011/05/02/the-top-5-mistakes-people-make-when-writing-product-reviews/
Thanks Paula.
Sometimes I feel like I’m getting crazy trying to find out whether my links are working or not, but knowing that they are being counted as clicks on my amazon account means they are.
I’ll work on my reviews and make it better. Just one question though, do you link to a specif product, or to a search results page in amazon that contains the specific product?
Thanks for all the help :)
Best,
Ana
We do both, it just depends on what is on the page. So if we are reviewing a specific product we will link directly to that product. If we are reviewing a range of products then we will link to a search page.
Hopefully some folks will see this post.
I was reviewing the stats on on of my Amazon sites and going through looking at what products were clicked but not ordered. What surprised me was that they seemed to be the same items I saw not many days earlier.
Finally had a palm to forehead moment when I realized that the Broken Link Checker plugin follows the link and it gets recorded as a click.
So if you are wondering why your ctr rate seems low while your clicks are high, this could be the reason if you are using the plug in.
Luckily I didn´t have any broken links but I did find a few of the product I promote had been upgraded to newer models. The older model I was promoting was now only being sold by other sellers and were used items.
I don´t even know if I get any commission for those items.
Is there really any point in having them on the site now or should I keep them with a link to the newer model?
I personally would leave it on the site and redirect to the new product.
This is so inconvenient, if it were to happen to me(and it did before) I would definitely leave the site without looking back and feeling a bit irritated. It’s so annoying to get so interested and excited on product that we plan to purchase or maybe just look it up then finding out that the link posted there will lead us to nothing. And to my belief, that will badly reflect on the site and not amazon. That is probably the most frustrating part about everything.
Brian;
I agree it is a frustration. But the tips given here on checking daily have really helped in being able to quickly find the broken link. All summer and fall I have been having another problem with Amazon – I have several sites where Amazon has the only affiliate links – I have been experiencing something called phantom clicks. Although it appears that people are clicking from your site to Amazon the clicks are caused by something else. This certainly messes up the stats. I have emailed and emailed Amazon about it and they acknowledge it, say they are working on it, but nothing happens. I have consulted some tech people but it appears it is an internal Amazon problem.
Hey Paula and Wanda,
I have just checked out my Items with no orders and all the 5 products i’m promoting are listed in their ASIN Number, but they are still listed in Amazon and they are not broken links… I’m worried, what’s wrong? Maybe that’s why I haven’t made a single sale yet… ???
Recently Amazon have changed things. Currently all of my items with no orders are showing exactly the same as yours. Hope they change back because it was a good system for finding those broken links. Doesn’t work at all now!
I have a feeling that Amazon might be having problems with that part of the system. We have noticed in the past week that we are getting a lot of broken links showing up that aren’t broken links.
If they are still listed in Amazon I would ignore them.
I will try and see if I can get any more info on this. If so, I will update this comment.