warning, i'm not good at explaining things.
so here's a really simple way to track keywords. It uses simple PHP and some dynamic keyword magic!
First let me explain how a keyword goes from your ad to your webpage. For those of you who don't know, the URL is a great way for you to store all types of info. Say your URL is mysite.com. with this url, you can actually add more stuff to it like mysite.com/?keyword=mykeyword. just look at the url for this thread... it has the thread title in it wickedfire.com/tracking-keywords-fucking-pissed-off. that's 1 example of how info is stored in the url.
Another example would be google...
apples - Google Search
q = any term you want. "q" is probably short for query. so if you put in wickedfire it will search google for wickedfire.
to track your keyword conversions you must first transfer the keyword from your ad on adwords(or any ppc engine) to your site, and ultimately into the sub id within your affiliate link.
Here's an example google ad:
{KeyWord:Tasty Apples for Sale!}
All apples are contaminated.
Except apples from my store.
order-apples.com
and the destination url is:
order-apples.com/?id={keyword}
{keyword} gets replaced with the keyword that activated the ad and allowed the user to click on it. So say you bid on the terms...
order apples, cheap apples, buy apples.
if the user searches for "cheap apples" on google your ad will come up. if the user clicked no that ad, {keyword} will be replaced by "cheap apples". Your destination url will now look like this...
order-apples.com/?id=cheap apples
Because I want to make this simple I'm not gonna explain redirects. All you need to do now is to insert the keyword into your affiliate link. Go into azoogle and find the offer you would like to promote. Get to the place where they have your affiliate link as depicted in the pic:
See how is says ?sub=apple ?
that is where your keyword goes. instead of sub=xxx you need to replace xxx with the keyword you are using. With the keyword already in the url it should be easy.
This snippet of php code pulls the keyword from the url and stores it into a variable called $id.
<?php
$id = $_GET['id'];
//aff link between the quotes
print ("http://x.azjmp.com/XXXX?sub=$id");
?>
http://x.azjmp.com/XXXX?sub=$id will now become
404 Error apples
save this as id.php or something. When you link all you have to do now is...
<a href="<?php require'id.php'; ?>">Click here to buy apples.</a>
To find out which keywords converted you have to goto azoogle and look at your sub id reports.
Sorry if this seems kinda rushed. it was more difficult to explain to complete noobs than I initially thought.