Understanding the results
This is a preview to the chapter Understanding the results from the book Making the Most of Google Adwords by Tim Hill.
Please note this text is copyright protected.
- the keywords are wrong, people searching those keywords aren't actually your target customer (even if you are sure they are, they just aren't).
- the landing page (where they arrive on your website after clicking your advertisement) is not converting the visitors.
- your advertisements are not worded correctly and they don't inspire internet users to click through or they don't inspire Google to show your advertisements in the first place.
However most of the time it is easier and faster to have two windows open so you can move between Analytics and Adwords with the minimum of clicking while trying to remember data.
What's good and what's bad
Even if you are unhappy with your results it is worth setting your expectations realistically. 90% of visitors will not be buying your product after clicking on your advertisement in Adwords, neither will 90% of them be signing up to your newsletter or reaching any of the other goals you have set.
As a very rough rule of thumb, for Ecommerce a conversion rate of 1-4% is seen as normal with the wide difference depending on industry sector and how well known your name is.
Note here I am talking about your conversion rate of customers who come from your Adwords campaigns. If you are running a radio campaign or other non-internet media advertising you might expect your overall conversion rate to be higher.
For other goals you will have to make a decision on what is a good conversion rate and you can tweak your site and your Adwords settings to see the difference and find the optimal combination. We'll discuss this tweaking process shortly.
Finding out what is going wrong
and all the others, when you
buy Making the Most of Google Adwords
What else is in the chapter 'Understanding the results'?
Which keywords are performing
In Analytics click Reporting in the top orange bar and then from the left hand menu select Traffic Sources – Advertising – Adwords – Keywords. ...
Ecommerce quick check
First make sure, in Analytics, you have made a note of the date range (usually the last 30 days). Then in Adwords ensure that same date range is set and ...
What to make of the data
Returning again to Analytics there is plenty of data there but does it tell us anything is wrong? Here are some of the clues: ...
What does Adwords make of the data?
You may have seen some red flags in the Analytics data above but it's also worth checking if Google agrees with you that they are red flags. This is because ...
Below average expected click through rate
This is a clear signal that the advertisement itself is not appealing to internet users. To counter this you will need to hive off the keyword or keywords for closer ...
Below average ad relevance
If you are targeting the keyword “blue widgets” but your advertisement never mentions blue widgets or any similar wording Google will mark you down for not having an advert which ...
Below average landing page experience
Here is a clear signal that users search the keyword, click on your advertisement but don't engage with your website. You should be able to see in Google Analytics that ...
Checking how the search results look
Sometimes when you are working on a Campaign you will want to have a quick check at how Google's search results are looking for a certain keyword. ...
Global visitor behaviour
So far we've looked at how to use Analytics to spot issues with individual Keywords or Campaigns. But you can also use it to get a global picture of how ...
