In this article, we talk about how to troubleshoot your organic attribution when it's higher than you expect it to be
Introduction
Once the Wicked Tracking Script is applied to your website, we will start to track all inbound clicks coming to your website. If that inbound click did not come from a paid source but it, rather, came from an organic source and you have the organic setting turned on, then we will attribute the click as organic. Thus, depending on the attribution model you are using, your lead or sales will start to see organic attribution. In this article, we talk about how to troubleshoot your organic attribution when it's higher than you expect it to be.
Do I need this article?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, then this article is for you:
- Is your organic attribution higher than you expect it to be?
- Do you feel like your organic attribution is taking attribution away from your paid campaigns?
- Did you have a recent spike in your organic attribution?
Our goal is to accurately track and attribute as many sales as possible. And, to give you the most holistic view possible, we show you what drove the customer to first find your brand (TOF), what kept the customer hooked and moved the needle toward the sale (MOF), and what ultimately drove them to purchase (BOF). As a result of tracking every click, it is expected that many of the sales within your customer journeys will see attribution to organic clicks alongside your paid campaigns. However, there are still times when high organic attribution could occasionally be an indicator of a potential tracking issue. If you're having trouble understanding your organic attribution or if you think there may be a tracking issue then you should read on.
How will this article help me?
This article is designed to help you make sense of your High Organic Attribution. By breaking it down into simpler parts, you'll easily identify and resolve knowledge gaps and/or tracking issues. Thus, you will gain the clarity and confidence you need when relying on this data to make your crucial marketing decisions. Here's how it will benefit you:
- Expectations and Tracking Issue Indicators:
You'll learn how to identify expected organic attribution, and how to identify tracking issue indicators in your high organic traffic. - Unvalidated Campaigns, Systemic Troubleshooting, Common Causes & Solutions:
You'll learn how to identify an unvalidated campaign that may present tracking issues, how to validate the accuracy of said campaign and, finally, what tracking issues are commonly responsible for your high organic traffic and how to solve them. - Next Steps:
You'll learn about the common solutions for high organic attribution and what to do if you have questions remaining.
Expected Scenarios and Tracking Issue Indicators:
In this section, you'll learn how to identify expected organic attribution, and how to identify tracking issue indicators in your high organic traffic. This section is important because it will give you the foundational knowledge that you will need before you decide to troubleshoot your organic traffic.
Expected Organic Traffic Scenarios
Simply having higher-than-expected organic traffic is not, in and of itself, indicative of a problem with your tracking setup. In fact, many types of funnels may expect to see a higher amount of organic traffic. Here are some common scenarios where you may expect to see higher organic traffic:
- Scenario #1 - High Organic Traffic To The Home Page URL
If your home page URL is responsible for the majority of your organic traffic seen in Wicked Reports, then this is not indicative of a tracking issue. Rather, this means your home page URL is genuinely receiving a lot of customer traffic and is nothing to worry about. - Scenario #2 - Dedicated Account And Check-Out URLs
If your login URLs, cart URLs, or checkout URLs are responsible for the majority of your high organic traffic (in tandem with your home page) then this is not indicative of a tracking issue. Rather, these pages are expected to see a higher amount of organic traffic due to the repeat traffic they receive. Furthermore, since these pages are rarely used for paid campaign traffic, it makes sense that they would be receiving organic clicks instead. - Scenario #3 - Filterable Products
If your website has many products for sale, which the customer can filter through, then this can commonly lead to high organic traffic. That's because each new filter that's used can generate a new variant URL and each new URL will be responsible for an organic click. Thus, leading to a high amount of organic clicks for many of your customers. - Scenario #4 - No Tracking Issue Indicators
In the next sub-section, you'll learn to spot the tracking issue indicators that denote an issue with your tracking setup. If you do not see any tracking issue indicators, and you can't point to something specifically wrong with your organic traffic, then this too would fall under expected behavior. On the flip side, the more indicators you see then the more likely you'll need to troubleshoot your underperforming campaigns.
Organic Tracking Issue Indicators:
Simply having higher-than-expected organic traffic is not, in and of itself, indicative of a problem with your tracking setup. See here. However, there are times when your high organic traffic could be indicative of a tracking issue. Here are some common scenarios where your high organic traffic might be due to a faulty tracking setup:
- Indicator #1 - A spike in month-over-month organic traffic
In the Mission Control Report, if your organic traffic has seen a significant increase from the month prior, yet your costs remain relatively the same, then this may indicate an issue with your tracking setup. - Indicator #2 - 20%+ of your unattributed leads/sales are solely organic clicks
In the FunnelVision Report, if you toggle your organic on/off and you can see that the percentage of your unattributed leads and sales is greater than 20%, then this may indicate an issue with your tracking setup. - Indicator #3 - 30%+ of your first-click organic attribution belongs to Paid Ad URLs
In the ROI report, if you're filtering by first-click attribution and you can see that many of your first clicks belong to Paid Ad URLs (such as collection pages, product pages, etc...), then this may indicate an issue with your tracking setup. - Indicator #4 - 20% or more difference in organic attribution compared to another platform
If you're comparing your data to another attribution platform, and you see that Wicked Reports is reporting a higher percentage of organic traffic (20% or more), then this may indicate an issue with your tracking setup. However, keep in mind, that this is most commonly due to differences in the attribution model itself rather than tracking issues.
If you're experiencing one or more of these tracking issue indicators, then it is highly recommended to run through our Tracking Validation Routine. This routine is designed and proven to identify and resolve the most common tracking issues across our client base. However, before you run the routine, you'll need to identify a campaign to run through the routine on.
Once the campaign is identified, you can run the routine, validate your tracking setup, and gain the much-needed confidence that your data is now accurate. With that in place, you can comfortably begin making data-driven decisions on a rock-solid foundation.
Read on to learn more about how to identify a campaign to validate, how to validate your campaign's tracking setup, and what tracking issues are commonly responsible for your high organic traffic.
Unvalidated Campaigns, Systemic Troubleshooting, and Common Tracking Issues:
In this section, you'll learn how to identify an unvalidated campaign that may present tracking issues, how to validate the accuracy of said campaign, and what tracking issues are commonly responsible for your high organic traffic. This section is important because it will give you the foundational knowledge that you will need to troubleshoot and resolve the issues that lead to your high organic traffic.
Unvalidated Campaigns
In this section, we'll show you three ways to track down a campaign that may have faulty tracking. After you've found your campaign, you will then need to run the Tracking Validation Routine to validate the campaign.
Although this process is most often run at the campaign level, you do have the option to run this at the ad-set, or ad level for more granular precision in your validation efforts.
- Method #1 - Landing page URLs
- By identifying the Landing Page URL(s) that are responsible for your high organic traffic, you'll be able to cross-compare these with your Paid-Ad Landing Page URL(s). If you find that one of your Paid-Ad Landing Page URL(s) is receiving a high amount of "organic" traffic, then you'll want to identify the campaign associated with that URL. This, then, is the campaign you'll want to run the Tracking Validation Routine on.
- To identify the Landing Page URL(s) that are responsible for your high organic traffic, you'll want to go into your Wicked Reports account and select the FunnelVision Report. Once there, turn on your organic traffic in your filterable options, and then filter by the "Organic" Channel. Now, sort your grid results by an important metric, such as Total Revenue.
- If you see a high volume of organic attribution to a URL (or URLs) that belongs to one of your Paid Ads, then you need to identify the campaign associated with this URL before moving forward with the Tracking Validation Routine.
- Method #2 Suspicious Campaigns
- By identifying a campaign that you think is underperforming due to a tracking issue, and you believe the organic traffic is "stealing" attribution credit from this campaign, then this is the campaign you'll want to run the Tracking Validation Routine on.
- Method #3 - High Cost Campaign
- If you can't identify a campaign through the above two methods, yet you still feel like something is off with your Organic Tracking, then the catch-all campaign would be your highest-cost campaign. A high-cost campaign is usually going to have the most data attributed to it, thus it's going to be great for identifying possible errors in your tracking setup. Use this campaign when executing the Tracking Validation Routine.
Systemic troubleshooting
The Tracking Validation Routine is our gold standard for tracking accuracy. It's a simple process, made up of a series of logical steps and tests, used to troubleshoot tracking-related issues. To properly use this routine, you'll need to identify a campaign, ad set, or ad that needs validation.
In the previous sub-section, we showed you three ways to track down a campaign that may have faulty tracking. Once you find a campaign, you will need to run our Tracking Validation Routine to validate your campaign's tracking setup. Simply follow each step, and the associated tests, within the routine.
- If all the tests have passed, then you can be confident that your campaign is tracking successfully.
- If any of the tests fail then, to get your tracking setup functioning appropriately, you'll need to do the prescribed action to resolve the error.
Common Organic Tracking Issues
In this sub-section, you'll find what tracking issues are commonly responsible for your high organic traffic and how to solve them. Here are the 3 most common causes of High Organic Traffic tracking issues and their solutions:
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- Problem: You haven't set up your URL Parameters correctly on your paid ads.
Solution: Locate the corresponding paid ad platform in our documentation. Ensure you've followed the documentation to set up your URL Parameters correctly. - Problem: Your URL Parameters are stripping off your paid ad URLs.
Solution: This is most commonly due to redirect links. Ensure your redirect links are set up correctly or remove them. Alternatively, ensure your server to configured in such a way as to preserve query string parameters for redirects. - Problem: You have a funnel where people commonly use two different emails.
Solution: Use the manual "Link Contact" feature, found in the LTV report, to merge the contacts together. Alternatively, configure your website to populate the originally recorded email into the sales email input field.
- Problem: You haven't set up your URL Parameters correctly on your paid ads.
Now that you know what to do, how to do it, and what to look out for, you should be all set when it comes to troubleshooting your High Organic Traffic!
Next Steps:
This article is designed to give you the foundational knowledge you need to locate, troubleshoot, and identify the common tracking issues associated with High Organic Traffic.
- If you've run through the process, made adjustments, and are now feeling confident in your organic traffic, then nothing further remains!
- However, If you've run through this article and you're still experiencing some uncertainty in your tracking, then please reach out to support@wickedreports.com so that we can help you.
In some cases, you could have advanced tracking issues going on, or you could be experiencing a bug. If that is the case then, please, reach out to us at support@wickedreports.com so that we can identify and resolve the issue as swiftly as possible. Otherwise, if this article has addressed all of your concerns, then you're all set!