Six Steps To AdWords Conversion Tracking Bliss

To those of you who are still using Converted clicks as your primary success metric in AdWords: It’s time to change.

The era of the “Conversions” column is upon us. In the last few months, the “Conversions” column has gotten better and better. By following a handful of straightforward but oh-so-important steps, you can ensure that you’re using that column to the fullest of its abilities.

In case you haven’t given much thought to Converted clicks versus Conversions, here’s a good refresher. Basically, Converted clicks is very limited as a metric. It’s not customizable, you can’t segment or differentiate conversion types, and it doesn’t track some really cool stuff, like store visits or cross-device behavior. It only tracks whether or not a click led to a conversion (any type of conversion) later on.

The “Conversions” column, on the other hand, has a lot of great features to take advantage of. Let’s get into it.

A Recap Of Recent Changes

Back in September, Google introduced optimization settings for the “Conversions” column, along with the “All Conversions” column. Both changes are great, in my view, as you can now prioritize the stuff that’s most important to you for both reporting and bidding (in “Conversions”), while still keeping an eye on everything you’re tracking (in “All Conversions”). Search Engine Land Paid Media Reporter Ginny Marvin’s coverage of that announcement goes over the major takeaways.

In October, Google enabled reporting for cross-device conversions at the keyword level. This one was particularly exciting for me because it meant that it was now possible to include cross-device conversions in your “Conversions” column. Once you’ve checked the box to include cross-device conversions in that column, those conversions will be taken into account for your automated bidding. Here is Marvin’s take back when the announcement happened.

In short: The “Conversions” column is what you should be using (not the “Converted clicks” column), and you can take full advantage of the new features with a few simple steps.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]