Link Scanner is a tool that enables you to scan an individual page (or a collection of pages) on a website and view information about the affiliate links and products found on the scanned page/pages.
Contents
How to use it
The Link Scanner can be accessed from the left hand navigation menu. The Link Scanner page will allow you to do 3 main things:
View a list of your scans
You can view a list of Scans which have already run, along with some relevant information associated with the scan. Here's an example of what that page looks like:
Create a New Scan
You can create a new scan by clicking the "Create New Scan" button and following these steps:
- First, enter a name for your scan. We'd highly recommend using a descriptive title with the brand's name - or something to help you distinguish other scans that you carry out, there's a chance they might have a similar name/purpose.
- You can either have Affluent help you find pages to scan or you can enter your own list of pages (URLs)
- If you selected "Help me find pages", complete the following:
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- Keyword search - required
- Website filter - optional, if you leave it blank it defaults to google.com
- Locale selector - optional, if you leave it blank it defaults to United States
- Choose to exclude Amazon pages - this excludes amazon.com pages from being returned in the search results below
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- If you have your own list of pages enter one or more page URLs that you'd like to include in the scan
- Run the scan and wait for it to complete. Note that you can continue to use Affluent whilst the scan runs in the background and you can ask for a notification for when it completes.
View a breakdown of the data
After the scan is complete, you will be able to view a breakdown of the information that was gathered. This will be split into two tabs:
Scan Overview
Under the "Health At A Glance" section, you will be able to view the following Key Metrics:
- Sum of Pages Scanned
- Sum of Broken Links
- Sum of Total Links
- Sum of Out of Stock Links
Under the "Share of Voice" section, you will see a graph which contains the calculated "Share of Voice" metric which is filterable by "Links per Domain" or "Links per Network". Note that the filter you select will apply to the "Share of Voice" graph and also the table of links.
Full Report
This tab contains a full report of the information returned in the scan, broken down in a filterable and sortable table with the following columns (please see the Link Scanner Glossary for definitions of all the terms listed):
- Page Scanned
- Brand Domain
- Network
- Affiliate Link
- Anchor Text
- Link Status
- Position on Page
- Product Name
- Product Description
- Category
- Brand
- Price
- SKU/ASIN
- Image
You will also be able to see the following Key Metrics:
- Count of Total Links
- Count of Affiliate Links
- Count of Broken Links
- Count of Out of Stock Links
A couple things to note:
Scans will run in the background, so you will be able to continue to use Affluent while you are waiting for the Scan to complete.
Once the scan is complete, you will be able to export the scan to a PDF with pages representing each of the tabs described above:
How to Schedule a Scan
Scheduling a scan will run the scan on a recurring basis so you can see up-to-date information about a given set of pages.
You schedule a scan by clicking calendar icon to the right of the scan, within the scan library under the "Actions" column:
You can choose to schedule the scan on a weekly or monthly basis:
If you have scheduled a scan at least one time, you will be able to use the Comparison-Mode feature when viewing the scan report. This will compare results from your most recent scan to your previous scan. Example:
Click on "Enable Comparison-Mode" in the upper right-hand corner of the report to see this view.
Link Scanner Strategies
Link Scanner can be used in many different ways. Click here for a rundown of how to best utilize it.