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:
Use the “pages/visit” metric to see if users aren’t finding what your ads are promising
Look at “% new visits” and first-click conversions in search funnels reports to avoid deleting upper funnel keywords
Put a value on keywords that assist conversions with the Model Comparison report
Find landing pages that drag down your account’s performance
Track phone calls and video plays as conversions
See all conversions side-by-side in campaign reports in Analytics
Use the Goal Flow report to find where your AdWords clicks are falling off in the conversion process
Find the best performing position for your ads with the Keyword Positions report
Track cohorts and understand the value of long-tail keywords with custom segments
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.
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