Key PPC Metrics and Features
Data, data, data.
You may feel like there is too much of it. There are a lot of metrics you can study, but when it comes to the world of PPC, we recommend that you review these first.
- What is my PPC ad’s quality score?
Google describes this as “an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages.” In other words, quality is key, and higher quality ads can mean lower prices with better positions. You can find your quality score in the “Keyword Analysis” field of your account by clicking the “Keywords” tab and the white speech bubble next to the keyword’s status.
Google further goes on to say that “Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of your overall performance in ad auctions, and is not used at auction time to determine Ad Rank.” The key point is this: quality score matters.
- What is my Cost Per Click (CPC)?
This simple metric at a glance will tell you how much you are paying for each visit to a landing page on your site. The other metrics will tell how long they stayed, if they converted, among other things, but your CPC will go a long way in determining how successful your campaign was.
- Destination URL
This report provides cost, spend an average CPC of the pages where your site actually goes. So, let’s say you’re an affiliate using a network site with an affiliate ID. The report will provide metrics for that “destination URL,” not the display URL. In other words, accurate metrics are the result.
- CTR (Click-through Rate)
Your CTR is “is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown expressed as a percentage (clicks ÷ impressions = CTR),” as many of you already know. This important in helping you to determine the effectiveness of the particular ad.
- Average Ad Position
The fact is how one position converts in comparison with another is a very key metric. The ad order can drastically affect your ROI and every effort must be made to fine tune other metrics to help insure you get your desired position. You can use this to compare your ad placement in comparison to others bidding for the same keywords.
- Ad Extension by Keyword
This is different from standard keyword metrics. This measures the “clickable” (link names) parts of your ad. In other words, which links are delivering the most clicks? The difference between a well-producing ad and one that under-delivers is sometimes the wording of your links.
- Search Term
The way keywords work is that they focus on the words you choose to attract users. The metrics based on the terms that users actually typed in (that triggered your ads) offer the key metric in refining your keywords. So, sometimes revising a single word or two can improve your ad’s effectiveness dramatically.
- Website Placement
This metric is helpful because many lead generators have more than one site. This metric shows the number of impressions, total ad spend, clicks, and average CPC.
These are some other questions to answer when reviewing your campaigns:
The reason for compiling, crunching, and comparing all of these numbers is to optimize your site overall and your PPC ads. So, once you’ve done this, you can do the following:
- Determine if your ad budget was adequate
- Refine the wording of your ads
- Determine and revise the pages on your site(s) that need attention
- Revise, if necessary, your ad times and other metrics and fine tune them
- Conduct further A/B ad testing to further improve your ads
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