Have you ever done a very specific search, for example “iPhone 3g” and gotten taken somewhere that doesn’t even mention the iPhone? Many advertisers using paid search don’t realize they are not only missing a great opportunity, they could also be losing business to frustrated or impatient visitors.

Picking the right landing page is highly important in paid search advertising. If an advertiser is bidding on product specific keywords and directing traffic to those product pages, they have an opportunity to capture the buyer toward the end of the buying cycle. The visitor knows what they want, has already done the research and should be close to buying. In addition, bidding on more specific keywords will usually be cheaper than general keywords because there is less competition. Eliminate the need for your visitors to do an internal search. Pick a destination page that is relevant to what visitors are searching for and prevent visitors from leaving the site because they do not see what they are looking for.

Using Google Analytics is a great way to get insight into landing pages performance. Businesses can view top landing pages and exit pages. This is valuable because it can show where the best or worst places are to drive traffic on your site.

AdWords users know that Google offers conversion tracking; however one limitation has been that this conversion tracking did not distinguish between certain types of conversions. For example, if you had 2 offers, newsletter sign up and contact us form, AdWords conversion tracking could not determine which action was taken. In order to see this, you would need to then look into your Google Analytics and cross reference to see which goal was completed. It would even take a few more steps to determine which keyword got the conversion.

With the ability to import Google Analytics goals into your AdWords reporting, there is no need to continue to bounce back and forth between the two platforms to determine where the conversion came from. If your AdWords and analytics accounts are linked, it only takes a few simple steps to import your goals. Then you will easily be able to determine which keywords, ads and campaigns are generating specific conversions. This will help to tailor each campaign to reach your desired goal completion target.

There is no need to install AdWords conversion coding any longer. In fact, conversions could be counted twice if both the engine conversion coding and the analytics goal are recording the same event.

You can also integrate analytics goals with Conversion Optimizer, which is a tool that helps AdWords users get more conversions based on desired cost per acquisition(CPA). Leveraging all of the tools that are available, using them to interpret data and making informed decisions will help any online advertising reach its maximum potential.

If you’ve ever managed a Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign you probably ran into the situation where your campaigns were tracking to go over budget.  Google, for example, allows up to 20% increase in ad delivery on high traffic days for AdWords campaigns.  If you experience a few of these days during the early part of the month, you could be faced with making decisions on how to stretch out your ad delivery in the month’s final days.  Do you turn off your campaigns altogether and wait for the next month to start?  Do you only run the most profitable keywords; if so, what are they?  Do you change the ad delivery so your ads only run during the day or night, weekday or weekends?  A good way to determine which strategy is best is to analyze your Google Analytics (GA) data (assuming you have a GA account).

You can leverage the data captured in Google Analytics to identify your top producing keywords.  In addition, you can run specific reports in Google Analytics to identify what times of the day your PPC keywords convert the best.  Google Analytics can help you identify the optimum time to run your ads, the best mix of keywords for Return on Investment (ROI), and the geo-targeting areas to deliver those ads.

Next time you need to make decisions about your PPC campaign when targeting a budget, take advantage of the market intelligence Google Analytics can provide.  Here are three reports that can help you make smarter campaign decisions:

1. In the Google Analytics main dashboard, click on Visitors Map Overlay to identify the local, state and or national areas to focus your campaign.  If your budget requires a more narrow focus, this report can help you geo-target your ads.
2. In the Google Analytics main dashboard, click on Traffic Sources Google/cpc choose the Dimension “Keyword” to help identify your top producing keywords.  Whichever metric you feel is most representative of success (E-commerce, lead generation, site usage) can be sorted in descending order for a quick reference of your best keywords.
3. In the Google Analytics main dashboard, click on Goals Total Conversions or Conversion Rate and at the top right of the main graph click on the Clock Icon to see the peak times your campaigns convert.

Once you have the business intelligence from these reports, you can make sharp decisions on which keywords to pause and which to keep running when you are up against a firm budget. In addition, you can focus your ad delivery to specific geo-target locations and dictate the times of day to run your ads.  These campaign changes can help maximize your advertising dollars when you need to find ways to stay within your monthly budget.