Managing and organizing your links is vital if you’re looking to measure growth, better analyze your marketing efforts, or even find that elusive link you built years ago. Staying organized can be a challenge, but we’re here to rise to the occasion. It is our never-ending quest to make managing your links and marketing campaigns even more manageable. And while all of these tools and features have been available for a long time, we figured it was time to put them all together to create the definitive link management resource to help our clients get the most out of their links.
So without further ado, let’s dive into the basics of link organization inside your Geniuslink dashboard!
The following write-up is split into two parts and describes how to manage and organize your geni.us links so that you can get the most out of our service and succeed with your goals:
Section 1:
- What are Groups?
- Bulk-moving links
- Group Overrides
Section 2:
- Searching, sorting and filtering links
- Archiving/unarchiving links
Along the way, you will discover some valuable tips and tricks to make the most of managing your links in the most effective way possible.
1) Fundamentals of Link Organization via Groups
What are Groups?
The very foundation of link organization begins with groups. Groups are essentially “buckets” that are used to organize and separate your links for better reporting and more granular affiliate tracking. If you only do one thing in an effort to better organize your links, you should begin with creating groups that align with your various online properties (e.g. blog, website, social media, etc.), promotional campaigns or other marketing activities. That way, with groups, your links can be bucketed into specific marketing campaigns or categories so that you can add more granular reporting for your specific marketing activities.
So now that you know what groups are and why it is such a beneficial tool, how do you go about grouping your links?
Organizing and managing your links with Groups
One of the most common practices for organization is to group your links together using the site or page-specific groups. This allows you to track the clicks from each site (or page within that site) to better compare the overall performance of each property, rather than just on a per-link level. Alternatively, you could also create different groups for each promotional campaign you may have.
For example, you could group all of the holiday electronics you will be promoting this year in a group called “Holiday Electronics”, while all of the soccer gear you want to promote come springtime can be added in a separate group. Ultimately, how you group your links is entirely up to you, so get creative!
Luckily organizing your links into different groups is incredibly simple. The easiest place to choose a group is to select one from the groups dropdown while creating a new link. From here, you can either create a brand new group by typing in a new group name or select from one of your already established groups. Once you have selected the group you would like to add your link to, click the save button, and you are all set! 
What if you have already built a link and want to organize it into a different group? Alternatively, what if you have multiple links that you would like to move into the same group? No problem here’s how!
First, navigate to your links page and select the boxes to the left of each link that you’d like to add to a group. Once you’ve selected all of the links you’d like to organize, click the “move to” dropdown at the top left of the links list and select the group where you would like them moved.
Once you’ve selected a group, your selected links will be moved into that group!
Note: When you migrate your links from one group to another, the individual link stats will still be reflected for each link, but the new Group level stats will only show reporting for that link from the time the link was added to that group forward.
So, if a link gets ten clicks while in Group A, then you migrate it to Group B; Group A will still show the ten clicks for that link that it received while it was in that group, while Group B will only show stats for that link going forward.
A few best practices when using Groups
- Assign notes to each group so you can jog your memory later and have a better idea of what you are using each group for. Notes will be explained in further detail in the link navigation section of this article).
- Including the date or year in the group name can be helpful, especially when you have similar names or share your Geniuslink account with teammates (e.g. Newsletter-Feb19).
Now that you know the basics of organizing your links into groups let’s discuss how to add unique affiliate IDs to each one of those groups.
Group-specific affiliation with affiliate overrides
Aside from better organization of your links, one of the greatest benefits of using Groups is assigning unique affiliate ids to each individual group. By default, all of the links within your account will use the ‘Default Affiliate Settings’ displayed on the Affiliate page inside your dashboard. However, by using our group overrides feature, you will be able to assign unique affiliate ids on a per-group basis in order to override your default affiliate settings.
Taking advantage of this feature will allow you to get much more granular commission reporting inside your affiliate dashboard, which allows you to see which of your properties or which specific marketing campaign is providing you with the greatest value.
For example, if you have multiple Amazon Associates Tracking IDs and want to track separate items per tracking tag, you can do that using group overrides.
Adding affiliate ID overrides
Here’s the process for setting up a Group to use a different set of affiliate IDs:
1. Head over to your Affiliate Page, and select a group from the “manage per-group settings” dropdown
2. Next, select the “Add a new override” button, and choose the Affiliate program you would like to override.
3. Add the appropriate affiliate parameters, and then click “Connect this program.”
Once added, our service will automatically affiliate any links within this group using the specific override IDs you set. Your overrides will be denoted with a “crown” icon next to the Affiliate Program.
Note: If no override ID exists for a specific retailer or country, we’ll always use whatever is set up for your default group.
That’s it! You now have the power to get much more granular commission’s data from any one of our supported affiliate programs using group overrides!
2) Advanced Link Management
Now that you have learned about the fundamentals of organizing your links into groups, it is time to get a bit more advanced and discuss how you can easily track down those links using our search, sort and filter features within the links list.
Before diving in, let’s take a step back and highlight the most significant advantage to managing all of your geni.us links – the “search tool.” Why’s that? Well, the search feature gives you the ability to sort and filter through all of your links – including advanced links and links that are organized into groups.
So, for example, say that you’d like to find certain links that you’ve built over a year ago. The trouble is that they’re hard to find since you’ve created 100s of links since then. Well, the search feature at the top of your links page is an incredible tool to help track down these hard to find links!
So once you become more familiar with the search feature, it will minimize the amount of time it takes to find old geni.us links so that you can edit and repurpose, for easier management and efficiency to get the most out of your marketing campaigns.
Navigating through your links
Let’s dive in and discuss how to track down those links using the links list!
The most helpful tool for the job is the search functionality within the links list. Search gives you the power to access valuable tools that can easily navigate through your entire links list:
- find a specific link
- filter links by group
- link type
- sort links by clicks
- date last updated.
That way, you can get the most granular search results by refining your searches by the categories listed above. Additionally, if you took the extra time to add titles or keywords in the notes section of your geni.us links, the search feature can easily track down hard to find links by referencing the descriptions you included. And this is especially important if you have created thousands of links. Adding solid notes to each of your links will be a great practice, in the long run, to save you time when searching for them again.
Incredibly, all of the search tools are waiting for you in the magnifying glass icon above your links list.
Filtering links by Group
Now let’s say that you are preparing to set up a new campaign for an email newsletter, and you have some older links in another group that would work great for the upcoming campaign.
You can filter through all of your groups by simply clicking the “All groups” dropdown menu to automatically filter your links via the groups you have created.
Now you can quickly locate the links added to a particular group to use for the new newsletter. So by searching for old links, you won’t have to go through the process of recreating the same link entirely. As some added benefits searching for links will save you time and prevent the clutter of having the same link built twice in your link’s list.
Advanced search parameters
Couldn’t find the link with the search filters above? No problem, you can set up even more granular search results through your Links list by clicking on the “Advanced” button in your search menu.
From the advanced search options dropdown, you will be able to view any previously archived links, as well as filter your links down by link type in order to find that specific Simple Link, Choice Page, A/B split, or Advanced link.
Pro Tip! Try our Notes feature for greater link organization and faster searches.
Using the notes inside the links the same way we mentioned above with groups will allow you to quickly and easily find your links when you need to since our system will search the notes field for keywords when performing a search.
And this is especially important if you have created thousands of links. Including great naming conventions or keywords to your notes to each of your links is an excellent practice in the long run and will save you time when searching for them again.
Cleaning up your links list
When it comes to managing your links, you might have noticed that there isn’t an option to delete a link. The reason we do this is to prevent links from breaking after they’ve been shared online because if a link was fully deleted from a client’s account, then any copy shared online previously would not be able to resolve when someone tries to click it. (Which wouldn’t seem very Genius)!
To solve this problem, we use “Archiving” as a simple way to hide a link from your view in the dashboard without actually deleting the link and its information.
How do I archive a link?
Say you have some older links from past marketing campaigns that you no longer want to include in your links list. No problem! You can easily archive any link(s) by simply clicking the check box next to the link(s) you wish to hide and then clicking the “Archive Selected” button at the top of the links list. This will remove the link from view, but it will still be localized and affiliated correctly online because an archived link still exists in our database. Additionally, the click data will continue to track inside your Geniuslink dashboard.
Want to view or restore a previously unarchived link? No problem! As mentioned above, first click the “Search” button at the top of your Links list, click “Advanced..” and then click the “Include Archived” bubble. This will display all of your previously archived links in the search results.
From here, if you would like to restore a particular link, you can click the checkbox next to the link you wish to restore and then select the “Restore Selected” button at the top of the links list.
This will restore any of your previously archived links to view on the links list so you can easily find and reuse them in your next marketing campaign!
Putting it all together
Now that you know everything about organizing and managing your links, it is time to put it to the test! Here is a great exercise that will help you to familiarize yourself with some of the different tools we have discussed above:
Try searching for a top-clicked link or your oldest simple link within a specific group, and update it to a choice page to give your readers options on where to purchase this product.
This way, you can navigate and engage with some of the more advanced search tools and create your very own choice page that’ll feature several options for a single product for your users to choose from.
Additionally, by making these changes, your link will update in every place where you have previously shared the link, i.e. an older YouTube video or a product review that you wrote from a while back. So now, whenever a user visits your old post, they’ll see a beautifully curated Choice Page instead of a single product page. Pretty cool!
Leveraging your tools
Managing all of your geni.us links can be quite the task, but do not despair! We at Geniuslink equip you with the tools and features necessary to make link management as easy or granular as you’d like to make it! The information above equips you with a powerful toolkit in an effort to organize and track down links that you have built in the past and are hard to find.
And since you are now familiar with these tools and how to use them, you can take your link management to the next level. The power is in your hands (and clicks) to test these organizational features and optimize your geni.us links in the best way possible.
So, now, you can keep your Geniuslink dashboard looking nice and tidy by:
- Organizing all of your geni.us links into separate groups
- Creating group overrides for specific marketing campaigns
- Using the search feature and its advanced search fields to scan throughout your entire link’s list.
- Managing old links that you’d like to archive or restore to your links list.
Now it’s your turn to have some fun within your Geniuslink dashboard. Maybe it’s time for some spring cleaning? Test out a few of these organizational features to see how they’ll work for your specific needs; you might even discover some great features along the way that you haven’t noticed before. And remember, the search functionality is the most powerful tool that you can leverage for organizing and optimizing your links.
Cheers, and happy link-organizing!