We know as online customers ourselves, that when you do a Google search, or click on an ad, you expect to find the product you’re looking for at the end of the link you’ve clicked on. And when we end up at a busy homepage, it is off-putting and can distract us enough to leave without making even a necessary purchase.

This is where deeplinking comes into play – often it’s essential to send visitors to a specific landing page, especially when you are using search engine marketing. Many visitors will leave your landing page without making a purchase if they do not find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

The Commission Junction affiliate network, or CJ.com, is one of the largest networks serving US and UK based affiliates and merchants. But I’ve never found it the easiest network to use, and until recently, I thought it was not possible to deeplink to specific pages or products – the same as with Clickbank. But many merchants do provide a deeplinking option if you know where to look.

How to find out if a merchant offers a deeplinking option:

• Go to the ‘advertise details’ page for a merchant then click on the link type you want to use at the right hand side of the page:

To find out if the merchant you want to link to allows it go to the merchant links area click on a banner or text link if deep linking is allowed there will be a note next to ‘Destination’ which says ‘Advertiser allows URL redirects for this link.’

How to create deeplinks:

• click ‘Get HTML’ besides one of the links from the list of results. (If you select more than one link with the checkboxes, then you will not be taken to the deeplinking page).

When you are given the HTML for the link, you will find out whether you can make this particular link into a deeplink. Unfortunately you currently have to check each link for a merchant to see if you can deeplink with it. This is something CJ are looking into changing, and according to their blog you can give them a call on 020 8785 5870 if you can’t find a deeplink for a merchant.

The image below shows the field you are looking for – a destination link option:

Change destination link to the URL of the page you want to an affiliate link to, then  click the ‘Update Link Code’ button.

Then, grab your deeplink code.