If you have an AdWords campaign but are not using the analytics then it is the equivalent of driving at night with the lights switched off! To make any changes for the good, you need to see what is going on in with your campaign! Even if you have switched on the analytics, you may not be using it correctly, so please read on.

What is Google analytics?

This is the best analytical system on the internet today. No other system comes close to it!

The reason why is that Google have spent millions of dollars on it (no other analytics software company has spent nearly as much on theirs) and for everyone who have an AdWords account it is absolutely FREE to use! You can use it even when your AdWords campaign is not being used.

Why have they spent so much and put so much effort into perfecting their analytics system. Because they want you to succeed using AdWords. Why? Because if you make more money out of AdWords advertising than you are putting in then you are a happy customer who will continue to use them. If you just break even or lose money using AdWords then you will walk. They don’t want that to happen. So use the tools they are giving you. It will work!

Their analytics lets you see what is happening when someone visits your site. It tells you what phrase they used to end up on your page. It will tell you where they are and which search engine they found you on. It will tell you if they arrived at your site via Ad Words, via portal or by the natural or organic search engines.

You can track a visitor to see how long they spent on a page and which page they were on when they left your site and it can reveal much much more. There are over 300 ways you can splice and dice this information.

So the first port of call when reducing your AdWords costs and increasing sales is to switch on your AdWords analytics.
You then need to install the urchin tracking snippet onto all of the pages of your web site.

This may all seem complicated but it is pretty straight forward. So lets assume that you have done all of that and you have your analytics switched on.

What do you need to look at?

Well, there are 300 different ways to look at the information, but most of it will be irrelevant to you. These will tell you how well or how poorly the phrases in your account are working.

The goal is to have in your account ONLY phrases that are generating sales and inquires. You don’t just want clicks from time wasters who click on your ad but don’t buy from you!

Analytics will help you weed out the phrases that are just generating time wasters and keep in the account the phrases are generating sales and inquiries!

The most important aspects of Adwords analytics are:

Site depth
Time on site.
Bounce rate
Conversion tracking
Site overlay
Traffic source
Visitor loyalty

The rest of the analytics is interesting but wont really be of any help to you. The key to success is interpreting these statistic correctly and making the right changes.

There is something else that is not covered by the analytics but is vitally important it is called quality scoring. Get a good quality score and Google will half your click price get a bad quality score and you will pay the maximum per click. I will deal with this separately after discussing the above.

Article writen by the author of “Make my website Work!” The Ultimate Website Marketing Course. Graham Callingwood