Sorting best keywords

[OMGVape]

How do you rate your PPC keywords to find the best performers?
CTR? CPC? Cost/conversion? Or a combination of the above?
What’s your formula?

 

[fisicx]

1. Filter out the ones that don’t get the impressions
2. Filter out the ones that don’t get the clicks.
3. Fix the site to improve conversions.

I start with a couple of hundred keywords and dozens of adverts and landing pages. After a couple of months this reduces down to a handful of keywords and landing pages. It’s the landing pages that are the most important component.

 

[Peter Bowen]

@fisicx has a reasonable approach but I'd take it one step further once you have enough impressions, clicks and conversions to get a statistically significant answer. Focus on cost per conversion.

It's the only metric directly related to the value your business derives from AdWords.

The other metrics are there as an aid to managing AdWords but they're not a substitute for actually making sales.

 

[Khurram Aziz]

Conversion is by far the most important metric. You don't just want to know who visits your site, or clicks a link on your site, but who is BUYING. Those are the keywords of real interested, engaged customers.

You can easily do this via Facebook advertising because Facebook provides a Facebook Pixel, which is code you can insert on the checkout page of your website and it will track how many people have actually BOUGHT your product that came through your advert.

I don't know if Google AdWords also has conversion tracking which allows you to add code to your site to see who bought after coming through keyword search.

 

[fisicx]

I don't know if Google AdWords also has conversion tracking which allows you to add code to your site to see who bought after coming through keyword search.

Yes it does. It's core to Google Analytics.

 

[Fredrik]

At the end of the day it depends why you do PPC, most likely its to drive conversions, if thats the case ROI seems like the logical choice... however as pointed out relevance is always going to be key so you need to look at it from a end to end p.o.v

 

[webgeek]

@fisicx has a reasonable approach but I'd take it one step further once you have enough impressions, clicks and conversions to get a statistically significant answer. Focus on cost per conversion.

It's the only metric directly related to the value your business derives from AdWords.

The other metrics are there as an aid to managing AdWords but they're not a substitute for actually making sales.

Actually, if you're doing display campaigns on GMAIL, you may find no conversion data attributable to Adwords, but will find a high number of referrals from GMAIL. The cross-tracking isn't attributing properly, and the value can be significant.

Also, Adwords can be a great brand introducer and re-enforcer. Turn off the campaigns and your direct conversions might drop drastically. Turn them back on and your direct might pick back up again.

Just because Analytics or Adwords don't show conversions in your easy to run conversion tracking reports doesn't mean the campaigns on Adwords aren't yielding huge results.

I'm afraid what Peter has said is somewhat true, though an oversimplification that discounts these situations (which in some industries can be massive).

 

[S Isaac]

Is there a good way to track this for non eCommerce sites?

The only thing I want people to do is to call us - we don't sell a product online so don't have a checkout to track.

I've heard of a system of generating different phone numbers for each individual landing on your site and then getting stats that way and backtracking to see who calls and who doesn't but didn't like the idea of having constantly changing numbers and if that would screw up our NAP, so I just left if alone.

 

[StevePoster]

Finding the best keyword performers in PPC requires analysis in the testing in which you separate the less or no engage from the top performers. This will give you opportunity to expand your chances to improve conversions from them but still the site page must provide the expected needed information as well as benefits for the target users.