Linking AdWords Campaigns to Google Analytics Accounts

As both are Google products, linking an AdWords account to an Analytics account is fairly simple and straightforward. However, there are a few caveats.

Google Analytics includes in its organizational structure ‘Accounts’ and ‘Profiles’. An ‘Account’ can include several different ‘Profiles’ to better segment, through filters, the tracking on a web domain.

A best practice when installing tracking code for a client, is to have a separate Analytics account for each individual website. Only one AdWords account can be linked to an Analytics account, so pre-planning and organization is paramount. At Mudbug Media, we set up an individual Analytics account for each client.

Because multiple website Analytics profiles can be included within a single Analytics account, it is easy for someone unfamiliar with web analytics to find themselves having to create a new Analytics account for a long-running website, and possibly losing the site’s historical data.

Choose Destination URLs with Care

Recently, I ran into a puzzle trying to link an AdWords account with the corresponding Analytics account. As far as I could tell, the campaign was linked to the Analytics account properly, and the Analytics AdWords report was recording clicks; however, the Paid Search segment was showing no visitors.

Working with Google and Antonio, Mudbug Media’s SEO and Analytics Specialist, we identified the culprit. Our destination URL was a redirect, and therefore was not triggering the Analytics javascript. Simply switching the destination URL for our AdWords ads solved the problem, and now the visitors are being tracked properly.

Tracking ROI

It is important to link AdWords campaigns to Analytics accounts because AdWords visitor behavior is essential to ROI tracking. AdWords reporting will provide insights into how the campaign is performing, but that is only half of the story. The advanced audience segment ‘Paid Search Traffic’ provides insights on how the visitors behave on the site. A high CTR is great unless the landing page has a high bounce rate – then it’s ineffectively spent money. What percentage of a website’s visitors comes through the AdWords campaign? Is the client paying for the majority of a site’s visitors?

Linking AdWords campaigns to Analytics accounts shows the conversion rates of AdWords visitors. Are AdWords visitors buying products from a website? How much is spent in AdWords per sale? Through linking a site’s determined conversion behavior to the AdWords campaign, Google can optimize an AdWords campaign for conversions. Google will place the most optimal ad for the most optimal keyword in the most optimal position for a sale.

Identify Your Culprits

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” is an advertising adage attributed to department store merchant, John Wanamaker. One of the most valuable aspects of online advertising is the ability to measure how advertising is performing, what methods are converting consumers into customers, and how much each new customer costs. Linking AdWords campaigns to Analytics tracking allows an advertiser to modify AdWords campaigns to perform at peak return.

“Make your data tell a story: find out more about Mudbug Media’s Web Analytics services.”

Credits: ”Photo courtesy of Marketing Sherpa“

Here’s a look at some of the sites Chris and Antonio turn to regularly for tips, analysis of current events and inspiration.

Search Engine News

Search Engine Land – This site has tons of valuable material covering Google, Bing & search industry news, as well as the yearlong PPC Academy series.

Search Marketing Now – This site offers webcasts, whitepapers and resources for online and search engine marketers.

Google Resources

Google Webmaster Central Blog – Google’s official blog for news on crawling and indexing websites for the Google index.

Inside Adwords – Google’s official blog for news, information and tips on AdWords.

Official Google Analytics Blog – The best source for information on updates to GA as well as tips.

Google Analytics Application Gallery – The Official Google Application Gallery featuring several great web applications built using the Google Analytics’ API.

SEM Implementation

Open Graph – Facebook recently created the Open Graph protocol to bring the rest of the Web to Facebook in an effort to rival Google’s web footprint. Additional metadata allows a site to rank within Facebook, and it also increases content share-ability by having site visitors publish site content, such as blog posts and news stories, to their friends via their News Feed.

Asynchronous Tracking – Google recently updated their Analytics Tracking Code and this blog gives step-by-step instructions on how to migrate to the new code.  The main benefit of asynchronous tracking is faster load time, which has recently become a factor of Google’s search algorithm.

LunaMetrics – LunaMetrics has accumulated a wealth of information and resources over many years of working with Google Analytics and Website optimization, and they like to share the most useful tips on this site.

Local SEO Resources

Local Search Rankings – Regionalized SEO comprises a large part of our SEO focus, so this particular blogpost offers tips for optimizing Google Places and Google Local Business Listing.

Local Search Optimization – This one is specifically for Google Maps and Google Earth.  It contains information regarding the utilization of KML within XML Sitemaps, an advanced SEO technique beyond standard issue, local SEO.

Online Marketing Resources

eMarketer –This is a go-to site for online marketing tips, trends and statistics. eMarketer typically covers topics such as social media strategy, demographic and online trending as well as industry news and opinions. eMarketer is also a great source for charts and graphs on the above topics.

Marketing Sherpa – Similar to eMarketer, Marketing Sherpa is a how-to guide on topics, such as ecommerce, email marketing and search marketing. It is also a great source for charts and graphs on Web marketing trends.

Let us know if you find these links useful by commenting below.  We always enjoy feedback.

If your business advertises online, the clear choice for pay per click ad campaigns for much of the last decade has been Google, but competing search engine Bing could end up giving Google a run for its money.

But it’s Not Google

When you compare the success of online ad campaigns on Google and Bing, the well-established Google really holds some major advantages over Microsoft’s Bing, which will celebrate its first birthday on May 28.

First of all, Google has become a verb.  How often does someone tell you to “Just Google” something at work?  Has anyone ever told you to “Just Bing” it?”  Unless people start “Binging” things on a regular basis, I just don’t see Google’s domination of the search engine market ending anytime soon.

What this means for businesses is Bing may not be the most effective choice for PPC advertising. One of our major clients has an extensive PPC campaign going on right now, and the results tracked by Google’s AdWords service and Bing’s AdCenter speak for themselves.

Over a four-week period, the campaign wracked up 421,456 impressions and 5,743 clicks on Google.  During that same time period, Bing only generated 202,041 impressions and 503 clicks.  Despite the fact that half as many people saw the ads on Bing and less than a quarter of one percent of the Bing impressions led to clicks, the Bing ads cost on average three cents less than Google.

One Big Step for Bing?

But don’t rule out Bing just yet.  As Mudbug Media Marketing Specialist Tara Curtis cleverly pointed out in this recent blog, Google’s long running domination of the United States internet market ended earlier this month when Facebook became the most visited website in the country for the week ending March 13^th.

While Bing has fluctuated between the 16^th and 23^rd spots this week, Yahoo has held steady at the number three spot.  With the announced merger of Microsoft and Yahoo, the nascent search engine will get a huge boost, exposing Bing advertisements to millions more people nationwide.

More Bing for Your Buck

With Bing potentially riding that merger to the top of the charts, advertisers will find themselves in an interesting situation.  Like all things Google, AdWords is an extremely user-friendly system.

AdWords allows for constant and easy manipulation of all aspects of a paid search campaign, while Microsoft’s AdCenter is not nearly as user friendly.  Making changes to ongoing campaigns in AdCenter is a time consuming process, and since Bing is only one year old, few people have had the time to get acquainted with its ins and outs.

So if Microsoft’s alliance with Yahoo brings Bing into more direct contention with Google as one of the top search engines in the world, online marketing professionals like myself are going to find it necessary to know how to optimize paid search campaigns for Bing with the same expertise as they do Google campaigns.

What This Means to You

While it may be too early to abandon AdWords and focus all your energy on AdCenter, it would certainly be a wise move to be proficient with both systems.  Paid search campaigns are dynamic and can fluctuate as market values and economic landscapes change.

Online marketing is an evolving but necessary facet of today’s advertising landscape requiring constant attention and adjustments.  If you are doing everything on your own or if the marketing firm you contracted for the campaign isn’t on top of new developments or possible market shifts, you can end up with ads that no one sees.

Google is already a powerful search engine and Bing could become one soon.
Use your advertising dollars wisely.

That’s where analytics come in.  Functioning like an online inventory system, analytics programs allow to you gather a wide range of information on every visitor to your site.  And since the majority of analytics programs are free and open to the public, there’s no reason why every website today shouldn’t employ some sort of analytical tracking method.

Here are the five most important tools that I use on a daily basis to track websites for our clients:

1. Google Analytics – A free service, Google Analytics is the real workhorse of analytics tools.  By far the most commonly used service, Google Analytics gives you click data on basic metrics – page views, unique viewers, and referral information.  It organizes it all in a layered fashion – you start with top-level dimensions and you can dig down according to whatever metrics you want to look at.  It also creates charts and graphs automatically and integrates easily with Google AdWords accounts for streamlined administration of your online marketing tactics.
2. Mint – While Google Analytics is based on dimensions such as pages, locations and referrals; Mint is real-time tracking – the Twitter of analytics.  Mint offers “Peppers,” plugins that allow you to really customize the way you track things on your site.  Google Analytics has an API, however useful plugins and third party apps are somewhat lacking at this point besides JuiceAnalytics.
3. AWStats – Free, open-source tool installed on our server that analyzes data based on the server log files.  Since AWStats is installed on the server level, it automatically tracks any websites operating off of that server, making it more reliable than Google Analytics, which is based on a JavaScript tracker that sends information based on user interaction.  While Google Analytics offers more robust information, AWStats offers reliable data to compare GA against.
4. Google Webmaster Tools- Much like we use AWStats to bounce numbers off of to get the most accurate information possible, Google Webmaster Tools helps us more faithfully understand traffic sources and other important data about the site.  These tools allow you to look at:
   • Search engine data – where did your site show up on the search results page, and is it worth it to pursue SEO if you’re already getting plenty of clicks in the fifth position front page?
   • Traffic sources – which pages have the most inbound links?
   • Most common keywords – what is Google currently associating your site with?
   • Page Load Time (part of the experimental “Labs” section) – how quickly/slowly the site is loading.  Are slow loading times becoming a problem?  This will become a bigger issue as Google begins to roll out their algorithm that uses page load time to determine placement.
5. My Brain – All of these tools are great and useful, but you need to be able to take a step back, analyze all the data and make an executive decision about how you want to proceed. A computer that can spot the most essential data for your particular set of needs and goals or personalize the overall image and usability of your site using analytic data hasn’t been invented. For that, you need your brain.