Q. Embedding URL campaign parameters to QR Code barcode.

[William Davis]

It would be ideal to embed URL campaign parameters to QR Code barcode using Google's Campaign URL Builder in order to track ad success.

However, this poses two problems:

1. Embedding campaign parameters significantly increases the length of URL, which in turns adds more data to QR Code barcode label, this decreasing devices ability to accurately scan QR Code labels. This issue can be easily remedied by using a URL shortening web service in order to reduce the amount of data on QR Code label. Thus, increasing devices ability to accurately scan QR Code labels.

This however, poses another set of problems.

2. When using a URL shortening web service, most if not all devices displays the domain name (in this case the redirecting service domain name instead of ours) as security measure (as it should), which is not at all good for branding.

Other concerns using a URL shorting web service is that one is at the mercy of the redirecting service. Can and/or would they later alter where to redirect traffic too? What happens should service ceases to exists?

Would it better and/or possible to come up with our own short URL using our domain name (https://www.DomainName.com/Book-ISBN-123456789.html) with a redirect to URL with needed campaign parameters to product landing page? If so, what kind or redirect should it be (e.g.: 301, 302, etc.)?

[William Davis]

No advice?

[MGWben]

Hey Bill,

I would go with the last thought, linking to your site directly with a short URL that redirects to the desired page with campaign params.

On the basic side, you could have a page setup in Miva that has your desired canonical URL for the QR code i.e. "https://DomainName.com/qr001". Then on that page have a simple on-page-load javascript to redirect to the desired end product url with parameters set i.e. window.location.href = ("https://www.domainname.com/Book-ISBN-123456789.html?campaign=ddfsdf&source=dfdsfdsf&... ..")

There may be a more solid way to do this, but this is the basic way I would do it.

[William Davis]

Hey Bill,

I would go with the last thought, linking to your site directly with a short URL that redirects to the desired page with campaign params.

On the basic side, you could have a page setup in Miva that has your desired canonical URL for the QR code i.e. "https://DomainName.com/qr001". Then on that page have a simple on-page-load javascript to redirect to the desired end product url with parameters set i.e. window.location.href = ("https://www.domainname.com/Book-ISBN-123456789.html?campaign=ddfsdf&source=dfdsfdsf&... ..")

There may be a more solid way to do this, but this is the basic way I would do it.

Interesting, thanks MGWben. I was thinking of manually creating a static page with a short URI that would redirect to product landing page using campaign parameters.

Example:

QR Code Label:
https://www.domainname.com/QRC-book-ISBN-123456789.html

Manual Static Page Redirect :
From: .../QRC-book-ISBN-123456789.html (Note:With a Robots.txt Disallow: /QRC-book-ISBN-123456789.html entry)
To: .../book-ISBN-123456789.html?campaign=ddfsdf&source=dfdsfdsf&...

Your suggestion as I understand it to be is essentially two Miva product landing pages, the first redirecting to the second, that never occurred to me. Is that what you are suggesting?

If so, which response code should I use (e.g.: 301, etc)? If I use 301, search engines will update their search results , thus circumventing our campaign tracking parameters.

[MGWben]

Firstly, my initial answer may not be the 100% best SEO practice, as it involves redirecting via javascript, There is debate on how affective the method is regarding SEO and crawlers BUT for your purposes I would think the campaign would still capture in analytics. With a noindex block on the page, it sounds like you want to keep track of the physical QRC scans.

And yes, I would purpose having your QRC landing page and from there redirect to the appropriate product page w/ params using a javascript redirect on load.

If you had multiple QRCs for different products, you could have 1 Miva page "/QRC" and add a param for the separate prods / campaigns you might wat to setup.
QRC?p=1
QRC?p=2
QRC?p=3
QRC?p=...
Then on page load, depending on the single parameter passed from the QRC action, direct the user to the correct product page with the correct campaign params.
This could even be /QRC?pPRODUCT-SKU and have the page redirect using that SKU parameter to the prod with campaign params attached

Something like this on the QRC (https://www.yourdomain.com/QRC?p=1):

$(document).ready( function() {
  var newurl;
  var url = new URL(window.location.href);
  var prod = url.searchParams.get("p");

  if (prod == "1") {
    newurl = "https://www.yourdomain.com/cuba-900-elias-entralgo-vitier-agramonte.html?utm_source=qrc&utm_medium=qrc-redirect&utm_campaign=mailer";
  }

  $( location ).attr("href", newurl);
});

Another thing, since this QRC page will have a canonical URI, even though there is a noindex, Miva generates a site map of all prods and pages that have a canonical, so in your Goggle Search Console, it will throw an error - since it is in the site map with a noindex.

I would suggest perhaps making this QRC page normal, without a noindex. Maybe with an on-screen QR code for the site and some info on sharing or something. Then Google should have no issue with the page and users only get redirect forward to the product w/ SEO campaign parameters if they had scanned your code and got to that page with the ?p=PRODUCT-SKU