When managing a Pay-per-Click campaign it is important to remember that continual optimization of the campaign is critical to success.  Keywords you thought would be perfect to drive qualified traffic to your site when you first launched a campaign may turn out to be poor performers.  Certain geographic locations that logically would make sense to target your ads may be out performed by locations you didn’t think there would be a big demand for your product or service.  An excellent way to discover what is working with your campaign and learn about new opportunities is by analyzing the data from an analytics program.

Here at MoreVisibility, we leverage the data from Google Analytics to help optimize PPC campaigns and expand our knowledge of how customers interact with our client’s websites.  With this knowledge you can optimize campaigns for greater success.  Here are a few examples of how you can leverage the data from Google Analytics to optimize your PPC campaign:

1. First thing is to set up goals in Google Analytics so you can track specific metrics and compare the data from your paid campaign in relation to the traffic coming to the site organically.
2. Conversions are very important, whether for e-commerce sites or lead generation sites.  Review the keywords that result in conversions both from the organic traffic and from your paid ads.  Remove keywords from your campaigns that are not producing, so you can allocate more of your budget to keywords that have a track record of success.  Create a test campaign where you can experiment with new keywords.  Over time, keep the keywords you see generating conversions and remove the poor performers.
3. Analyze where the traffic is coming from.  Is there a specific geographical location that drives more conversions than other locations you are targeting?  For example, you may have a national campaign, but Google Analytics shows that traffic from Florida converts at a higher rate than the campaign as a whole.  If so, think about creating a separate Geo-Targeted Florida campaign and allocating a specific budget to target the customers in that area.  This can give you additional flexibility when determining the most efficient way to spend your advertising dollars.
4. Lastly, look at the relationship between the keywords you are running in the PPC campaign versus the keywords that drive organic traffic to your site.  You may find there are keywords people search on to find your site that you are not running in your paid campaign.  This is an excellent way to expand your PPC keyword list and discover new keywords you originally didn’t think to include in your campaign.  In this way, you are constantly optimizing the campaign and growing the keyword list based on successful keyword research.

Remember, managing a PPC campaign is an every day task.  Optimizing the campaign is critical to your success and using an analytics tool, like Google Analytics, can bring new insight through real world (real time) data, and help you develop a high performing search engine marketing campaign.

 

“What happened, I don’t understand what’s going on?” These were the first words I heard from my co-worker one morning. “Look at the Google Analytics,” she said. As I looked at her screen I saw the Google Analytics line chart heading south and then hitting a plateau. The chart was showing that the client had consistently been at 200 clicks for the month and then the clicks had dropped down to the 100’s and stayed there for the last week of the month.

I started thinking of everything that could have caused the client’s clicks to be cut in half. We had lowered the budget because the client was trending to go over, paused keywords that the client had felt were unproductive and removed certain geo-targeted states, but nothing was able to account for the significant decrease in clicks. As I looked at the Google Analytics chart it showed that the decrease in clicks had occurred on a certain date and then the next day it had hit a plateau. Whatever had caused the decrease had remained consistent because the clicks were still in the hundreds.

We pulled the Google Analytics data from the month before and the clicks were all in the 200’s. So what caused the drop?

I keep notes on the changes I make to client’s campaigns. That way I can go back and track what worked better for a client or what had no affect. Based on Google Analytics, the changed had started on one of the last Thursdays in the month. I went back and checked my notes. I had lowered the budget, but I had also changed the keyword type from broad match to phrase match. Bingo! That’s what caused the change. I went in and changed the keywords back to broad match and sure enough the clicks went back up to 200. Whew! Thank goodness for Google Analytics. What would have happened if we didn’t utilize Google Analytics? We would probably still be trying to figure out what caused the change. Moral of the story, you should have Google Analytics or some analytics program in place, as you never know when it’s going to answer the famed questions of Why, When, What & How?

After five months of getting used to the new analytics interface, Google figured it was time to shake things up again. The following three changes are on the horizon:

Site Search - Expanding upon current Site Search capabilities, we will now be able to get data on keywords, categories, and products across time and user segments.

Event Tracking – With this addition, you will now be able to tag and track Flash and Ajax events. I can tell you from experience how difficult it is to really track traffic from Flash sites.

Tagless Outbound Link Tacking – This feature will allow for users to track their exit links (links that visitors clicked on that take them to another website).

Although these features will start in beta, many in the industry see this as a pioneer move for Google to set themselves apart from their competitors, making their’s the metric tool of choice. This just goes to show how vital it is to incorporate Analytics into your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Campaigns. With the data this program can provide, there is no end to the value it can bring with your SEM efforts!