Google Adwords Tracking

I am big fan of Google Adwords to generate traffic to some of my sites. I gladly spend thousands of dollars a month with them for one reason: it is profitable to do so.

Up until know, it has been a headache trying to track the individual performance of my campaign keywords.

Granted, Google let me track individual campaign groups for their click through performance, but they gave you no indication of which terms were actually making the sales.

It is critical to know this!

If you have no idea which terms were working and which weren't, you were guaranteed to be wasting some money spending top dollars for clicks on useless terms.

Prior To Now

Tracking is critical and it is something I talk about in other articles on this site.

I will be the first to admit however, that it was near impossible to set up individual tracking campaigns for each and every keyword.

I improvised a bit by tracking small groups of very similar keywords. At least this was giving me some feedback on things. It did in fact prove quite helpful in targeting more useful keywords.

From watching the stats, I knew that certain groups of keywords were much more likely to lead to a sale. This meant that I would make these keywords a priority when it came to bidding.

A lot of work but it was worth it for me.

Google Adwords Tracking Addition

Things just became much easier for me and anyone else using adwords.

Google now allows you to track the performance of individual keywords. You can not only tell which keywords are converting into a sale, but you can set it up so that you know how much money each keyword has generated for you.

I was thrilled to read about this addition!

Here is how it works...

The Science Behind The Tracking

When someone clicks on your adwords account, they get sent to your link as normal. The only difference is adwords sets a "cookie" on the computer of the person who just clicked through.

A majority of people coming to your site are probably not going to end up buying from you. (If that's not true with your site, I would love to find out how you are doing it! :)

If the visitor leaves without buying, nothing happens to your adwords stats.

On the other hand, if the visitor becomes a customer they eventually end up on your "Thank you for your purchase" page. On this page, you have a small bit of javascript on there which google provides you with.

This javascript checks to see if you were just sent from a google adwords campaign. If you were, google keeps track of which keyword was used to send them there. The stats in your account will reflect this sale.

Current Adwords users can get started by logging into their account then clicking on conversion tracking up top:

The program does a great job of stepping you through the process.

Tracking Sales Amounts

The google adword tracking lets you set up individual sales amounts. This means that you can see exactly how much money a term has made for you. Powerful info!

If you have separate sales pages for a variety of items you are selling, you simply place different code on each sales page. Google lets you specify the dollar amount earned from the sale and then generates the code to track the amount earned.

Here is a screen shot of it:

As shown above, you can enter the dollar amount of how much is earned by that sale. You put the value (in this case $20 is entered as 20) and then hit refresh code.

It then generates the code to be placed on your sales page.

Dynamic Pricing

What if you have a shopping cart program where an unknown sale amount will be earned each time?

No problem.

Google lets you enter a variable for the total sales amount and will track that for you.

Suggestion

Here's a tip for you.

If you use adwords in addition to clickbank or another processor, you may want to enter your actual profit as the sales amount to track.

For example, say you had a $32 product.

After clickbanks fees you only earn $28.60. I would put 28.60 in for the amount of sales to credit the keyword with. This is a more accurate reflection of how much money the keyword generated for you.

Not Just Sales Tracking

You can decide what it is that you want google to track for you. It can be:

• Sales
• Leads
• Signups
• Page Views

For example, you may be earning money simply by having someone signup for some service. You can keep tracking of which keywords are most effective.

For a full explaination of the tracking program, current adwords users can check out this page:

https://adwords.google.com/select/faq/conversions.html

Final Evaluation

The bottom line for me is that I will be able to spend my money more wisely and focus on those keywords which are having the maximum results for me.