10 Ways To Leverage Google Analytics For Better AdWords Results

AdWords is great at telling you how much money your ads cost and how many conversions you’re getting but what happens between the click and the conversion remains a mystery unless you add Google Analytics to the equation. It can tell you what people do on your site, so if they’re not converting, it can […]

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AdWords is great at telling you how much money your ads cost and how many conversions you’re getting but what happens between the click and the conversion remains a mystery unless you add Google Analytics to the equation.

It can tell you what people do on your site, so if they’re not converting, it can help you find out why. And when you can fix conversion rate issues, your AdWords performance will get better.

With the speed at which new features get added, it’s easy to overlook one or two cool capabilities so here’s a roundup of 10 of my favorite ways to use Analytics to improve AdWords performance.

Some of these reports are oldies but goodies and some are just a few weeks old, but they all deserve to be part of our SEM toolkits.

10 Things I Look At In Google Analytics To Make Better Decisions In AdWords:

  1. Use the “pages/visit” metric to see if users aren’t finding what your ads are promising

  2. Look at “% new visits” and first-click conversions in search funnels reports to avoid deleting upper funnel keywords

  3. Put a value on keywords that assist conversions with the Model Comparison report

  4. Find landing pages that drag down your account’s performance

  5. Track phone calls and video plays as conversions

  6. See all conversions side-by-side in campaign reports in Analytics

  7. Use the Goal Flow report to find where your AdWords clicks are falling off in the conversion process

  8. Find the best performing position for your ads with the Keyword Positions report

  9. Track cohorts and understand the value of long-tail keywords with custom segments

  10. Find out quickly if any AdWords segments are underperforming with Intelligence Events

For more details (including screenshots) on how you can employ these techniques, check out my full column on Search Engine Land and comment over there if you’d like.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Frederick Vallaeys
Contributor
Frederick (“Fred”) Vallaeys was one of the first 500 employees at Google where he spent 10 years building AdWords and teaching advertisers how to get the most out of it as the Google AdWords Evangelist. Today he is the Cofounder of Optmyzr, an AdWords tool company focused on unique data insights, One-Click Optimizations™, advanced reporting to make account management more efficient, and Enhanced Scripts™ for AdWords. He stays up-to-speed with best practices through his work with SalesX, a search marketing agency focused on turning clicks into revenue. He is a frequent guest speaker at events where he inspires organizations to be more innovative and become better online marketers.

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