outbound link tracking

Does VBSeo support outbound link tracking? If so, to what extent and how is the tracking done? I would like it to convert all links on my site to be tracked so I can see the stats.

If possible, I'd like it to post the number of clicks next to the link or in the href title on the forum post and say something like "100 clicks, 3rd most popular outbound link." At the very least, I need to be able to track clicks in the admin or in a report.

I do not use Google Analytics, either, so this just needs to be internal.

Thanks!

vbseo does not do that natively.

however, it does allow for an '/outgoing/script/' funnel if you do decide to use analytics.

Is there any documentation that describes how that is used? I'd like to see how easy or hard that is to implement, and how it would work, to see if it would suit my needs. It's pretty much the crucial reason to making a buying decision.

its a simple yes or no option to turn it on. There's no set up involved.

here's some external links:

Google
MSN.com
Yahoo!

view source of this page.

you will see

Code:

<a onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outgoing/http_www_google_com');" href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank">Google</a><br /> 
<a onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outgoing/http_www_msn_com');" href="http://www.msn.com" target="_blank">MSN.com</a><br /> 
<a onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outgoing/http_www_yahoo_com');" href="http://www.yahoo.com" target="_blank">Yahoo!</a><br /> <br />

which triggers the analytics funnel tracking for outgoing urls.

Okay, so then that tracks it somewhere in the admin so I can see something like

Google: 22 clicks
Yahoo: 47 clicks

Correct?

The clicks are tracked in the Google Analytics like this :



Showing that, on my Forum, this week, the phpbb.com link (http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=475642) was the 9th most clicked link (having 26 clicks).

But I don't use Google Analytics. Is there any other way to track the clicks?

As stated, it's not built into vbseo.

Analytics is free. Why not use it?

I had some performance issues with them several times, to the point where it was greatly impacting my site page load times, so I removed it. However, if this is the only way to track outbound links I may try again.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

If you use vbseo, vbseo adds GA at the very end of the page real time. If it ends up hanging up, the site is fully loaded at that point, so there's no ill effects to it.

I just thought I would update you that I've purchased and installed VBSeo and enabled that setting and it's working perfectly. I'm having a few slow downs, but nothing like before, so all in all I think it's worth it.

Thanks for taking the time to explain how that all worked!

Welcome aboard james

Wonder, if this can be added to vbseo.. for some reasons we do not prefer using analytics

i think that's off-scope for vbseo. tracking and analyizing data is NOT what vbseo is about.

Agreed, but this can serve as additional useful option which wont be available in stock vbulletin