How to audit your ppc campaign and identify success metrics

If you run a Google AdWords account to supplement your organic SEO efforts, you know there are a lot of metrics available to track and analyze.

Sometimes this can be confusing and overwhelming.

Since we all have limited bandwidth, it's a good idea to narrow down the key stats that really give you meaningful insight into what works and what doesn't in your paid search campaigns .

Before we dive into the key stats to track, let's take a look at a checklist to consider when you audit your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Checklist d 'PPC audit

1. Check your location and target settings.
2. Rate your ad against you on your landing page.
3. Use ad extensions.
4. Rate your keywords.
5. Measure your success with analytics.

1. Check your location and target settings.

When auditing your PPC campaigns, the first step should be to check your location targeting settings.

For To do this, make sure that you have correctly configured the regions served by your business. Remember that you can also exclude locations to which your business does not have stores or cannot deliver.

Additionally, you can look at geographic reports to see which placements are performing best. By doing so, you can prioritize your ad budget by placement.

2. Rate your ad against your landing page.

After reviewing your analytics, you might find that your PPC ads are not converting.

When this happens, it's time to watch your ads and see if your landing page meets your expectations.

For exemple, if an ad sells a "free CMS ", but your landing page is focused on an inbound marketing certification, there will be a disconnect.

To avoid this, make sure your headlines and advertising content match the landing page you are linking to.

3.Use the extensions ad.

The Ad extensions are one of the only ways to differentiate your ad from the rest.

Essentially, ad extensions allow you to supplement your ad with additional information at no additional cost. This information could be your phone number, additional site links, or even notes.

If you haven't set them up for your PPC campaigns, it might be time to see how they can improve your ads.

4. Rate your keywords.

When choosing keywords for your cPPC ampagne, you need to consider search volume, match type, and negative keywords.

In general, the keywords that you are targeting should have high search volume.

Next you should consider the type of match on yo your keywords. For example, if you're using a broad match, you'll want to add negative keywords.

If you use an exact match and an exact phrase, you're more likely to get clicks and conversions, but you might be missing out on other opportunities.

As a general rule, it is a good idea to target keywords with high search volume and use the broad match. Then you need to modify your campaign with negative keywords in order to increase your conversion rate.

5. Measure your success through analytics.

When you want to audit your PPC campaigns, you need to take a look at your analytics.

These analyzes will let you know which campaigns were successful and which were not. When a campaign is unsuccessful, you can fix the problem and figure out why.

Now you might be wondering "What PPC metrics should I look at? "

Below, let's go over five metrics that will give you the most for your money.

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PPC metrics

If you have little time, these five metrics will give you great insight into your performance. I'm not saying you shouldz Ignore all other available stats, but tracking these five stats over time will provide a solid measure of your success.

1. Quality Score

Quality Score is Google's measure of the relevance of your keywords, used to ensure that Internet users see relevant ads and have a positive experience. Factors that determine your Quality Score include:

• The click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the corresponding ad
• The relevance of the keyword and of the ad vs. search query
• The relevance of the keyword to its ad group
• The CTR of the URLs to display in the ad group 'Ads
• The quality of your landing page

Maintaining good quality scores is important because Google uses them to determine the ranking of your ads as well as combien you pay per click .

Even if you think that "I pointed your i's and crossed your t's when it comes to keyword research , the structure of the campaign and ad copy optimization, low average quality scores indicate that you are missing a piece of the puzzle.

2. Click-through rate

Recently, I asked 17 PPC experts to give me the top three PPC Measures that they pay the most attention to when analyzing their AdWords accounts. Click-through rate was the most common response. CTR is important for several reasons, among which:

• It 's one of the most important factors in determining your quality scores
• It tells you whether or not your ads are relevant to internet users

Low click-through rates indicate that your keywords or ad creation ( or both) need to be improved.

3. Conversion rate

Another very popular answer in our PPC metrics interview, the conversion rate tells you how many people who clicked on your ad have pursued the desired action on your landing page.

Conver Click-through rate is just as important as click-through rate - you don't want to pay for tons of clicks and traffic if none of that traffic ends up taking meaningful action.

High conversion rates mean that the money you spend per click comes back to you in the form of profit (that's what we call return on investment, my friends).

4. Cost per conversion

As Joe Vivolo of KoMarketing Associates said, "It 's obviously the number that makes or defeats a campaign from a success / failure perspective. "

In other words, if you have to pay more to gain a new customer than this cliIt doesn't really work for your business, then your campaign fails; you haven't achieved a return on your investment.

5. Wasted Spending

Wasted Spending is a measure of the amount of money you basically pour down the toilet by paying for clicks that do not convert. In other words, it's a ROI killer.

The best way to cut down on your wasted spending is to use negative keywords wisely. Negative keywords allow you to filter out traffic that is irrelevant to your business and unlikely to convert.

By creating a negative keyword, you are preventing your ads from showing for search queries containing that keyword. Bids on non-converting keywords are a waste of your marketing budget.

Want a quick way to check your performance for key metrics.me these?

The AdWords Performance Grader is a free tool that performs an instant PPC audit on your AdWords account, comparing your performance in areas such as quality score and wastage of expenses for other advertisers within the same budget range.

It's an easy way to measure yourself against your competition and compare your campaigns so you can track changes (hopefully improvements) in your results over time.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in October 2011 and has been updated for completeness.