How You Can Set Up and Accurately Track Your PPC Analytics
Setting up your pay-per-click (PPC) analytics and tracking them can be tricky, but they are well worth it. If your business is up for the challenge, working with a Chicago PPC agency should serve you well. With adequate knowledge and guidance, you are a step closer to accurately measuring your PPC campaign’s performance.
To help you get started, this article will discuss the following:
- Understanding key reporting metrics
- Setting up PPC conversion tracking
- Avoiding common conversion tracking mistakes
Are you ready to step up your PPC game? Let’s go!
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Understand Key Reporting Metrics
Why do you need to set up PPC analytics and tracking? To ensure that your PPC campaign is performing well. This means understanding key reporting metrics that provide actual figures. However, you may not be fully clear which metrics matter the most. Read on!
Every metric you see in Google Analytics has value, but some deserve more of your attention.
- Average click-through rate (CTR): The ratio of clicks to impressions is known as CTR. It gauges how well your advertisement draws clicks. A high CTR shows that your advertisement is interesting and relevant to your target demographic. Increasing your CTR can decrease your cost per click while generating more clicks and conversions.
- Quality Score: This is a metric used by Google Ads to measure the quality of your ads and landing pages. It considers factors like ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected click-through rate. A high quality score can lead to higher ad rankings, a lower cost per click, and better ad performance.
- Impression Share: This calculates the proportion of eligible impressions out of all impressions where your advertisements were seen. A low share suggests your ads are not appearing as frequently as they should. Improving this metric can increase visibility, which may result in an increase in clicks and conversions.
- Average Cost per Click (CPC): CPC is the cost you pay each time a user clicks on your advertisement. Your advertising budget can be stretched further, and your ROI may rise if you reduce your CPC.
- Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of clicks that result in a conversion, such as a sale or a lead. A high conversion rate indicates that your ad and landing page are effective in persuading users to take action. Improving this metric can lead to more conversions and a higher ROI.
- Cost per Conversion: This calculates the cost of each conversion. Your ROI can be increased, and your advertising can become more cost-effective by lowering this parameter.
- Average Position: The average ranking of your ad on the search engine results page (SERP). A high average position can lead to more visibility and potentially more clicks and conversions.
These metrics are likely to help your business achieve its PPC goals. However, they are not the only metrics you can track. Businesses have different sets of goals, requiring different approaches. Feel free to dive deeper into other metrics if you think they can help you improve your PPC campaign.
Set Up PPC Conversion Tracking
With a firm grasp of the essential metrics, you are now ready to set up conversion tracking.
Conversion is considered the holy grail of marketing; thus, tracking it is important. Setting up conversion tracking can seem complex at first glance, but it can be simplified in a few steps.
- Create a conversion action in your PPC advertising platform. This lets you track valuable website actions: purchases, contact forms, and newsletter signups are examples. Conversion actions may vary by advertising platform. You usually need to name and set a value for the action. Next, identify your website's conversion triggers.
- Generate a tracking code. Once you have created a conversion action, your advertising platform should provide you with a tracking code. This code can track when a user completes the conversion action and send that data back to the advertising platform.
- Add the tracking code to your website. Various methods are available for adding the tracking code, depending on your website’s platform. For instance, platforms such as WordPress let you use a plugin to add the code. Alternatively, you can manually add the code to the header or footer of your website's pages.
- Test the conversion tracking. Once you have added the tracking code to your website, test it to make sure it is working correctly. You can do this by completing the conversion action yourself and checking to see if the data is being recorded in your advertising platform.
There could be more steps, depending on how thorough you want to be. However, the steps discussed above should work well as a guide.
Avoid Common Conversion Tracking Mistakes
Accurately tracking your PPC analytics means doing it properly. Doing it properly means avoiding mistakes.
If you are working with a Chicago PPC agency, you should be able to steer clear of the most common errors. Still, being familiar with them cannot hurt your PPC campaign.
- Fixating a single conversion action: You want to track a purchase or request for a demo, but many other actions are worth tracking. Conversion actions such as engaging with a chatbot or downloading a whitepaper should be tracked as well.
- Mistakenly tracking non-conversion events: A wide variety of events must be tracked for accuracy, but too many can be harmful. Be careful not to track non-conversion events as conversions. Actions such as page views, social media icon clicks, and video views are mostly not worth being tracked.
- Treating all conversions equally: Conversion actions are not made equal. Some events are of higher quality or value. Make sure you track each of them accordingly. For example, a user who fills out a demo request form is unlikely to be as qualified as someone who just called your business.
By avoiding these common mistakes, you decrease the likelihood of inaccurate tracking. However, many other factors contribute to tracking accuracy. For instance, failure to protect your PPC ads from click fraud can have damaging effects on your conversion tracking. Do your own due diligence to avoid trouble down the road.
Summing Up
Setting up and accurately tracking your PPC analytics is necessary for success. We have discussed critical metrics to track and actionable steps to help you. Still, you want to work with a professional PPC agency for expert guidance. Contact Digital Authority Partners today.
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