I've been reading this forum for years and have benefited several times, but have never given something back. I've setup a system to optimize my own PlugRush traffic trades using Google Analytics and thought it's a good way to give something back.
This guide is for everyone using PlugRush and trading traffic with it. Having Google Analytics installed is a necessity. If you don't already have it, I highly suggest you install it, because it's a really useful and free tool! If you don't have a PlugRush account yet, feel free to use
my referral link ;)
I'll go step by step. If anything is unclear, please post a reply and I'll do my best to help.
1) Create your adzone in PlugRush and make sure traffic trading is set to 'Yes'.
2) Create your plugs and append this string to every URL:
?utm_source=plugrush&utm_medium=plug&utm_term={$do main}&utm_campaign=plugrush
3) Wait for your plugs to be approved and let it run for a few days. Then go into Google Analytics. Go to Traffic Sources - Sources - Campaigns. Here you should see a campaign named plugrush. Click it. Then there's one 'source', also named plugrush. Click it. Now click 'Secondary dimension' and choose 'Keyword' under 'Traffic Sources'. This should give you an overview that looks like this:
A high value in 'pages/visit' and 'avg. time on site' is good. A high bounce rate is bad. Compare the values and identify that bad performing domain names.
4) Go to the Tradestats page on PlugRush and open the 'Referrals' subpage here. Find the bad domains in the list and block them by clicking 'Block Trade (Globally)'. The 'Return Ratio' of each site/domain could also be a factor in determining which trades to block.
I repeat step 3 and 4 every few weeks. After a while, this should give you a traffic boost, because you're getting better quality traffic from PlugRush. That's it! I hope this guide was useful to some.