Where do I start? Understanding PPC Data

After starting your paid search campaign you’re going to start collecting data. Here’s a simple breakdown of the data you’ll be looking at each day as you monitor and optimize your PPC campaign.

Clicks – This is the number of times someone has seen your ad show up in a search result and have clicked on the ad.

Impressions – How many times the ad has actually shown up for a search; even if a user doesn’t click on it.

CTR – Also known as “click-through rate” this number is the number of clicks divided by impressions. It’s a percentage of the overall clicks that actually get through to the website based on impressions. If your ad is getting a lot of impressions and not that many clicks then you might want to review your ad copy or think about using a different keyword.

Average CPC – CPC stands for “cost-per-click” and this number is basically telling you about how much you are paying each time someone clicks on your ads. Remember that some keywords are more expensive than others, however, there are ways to help reduce how much you pay for clicks by optimizing your ads.

Cost – The total cost you are paying for the campaign (all the clicks’ cost added together).

Average Position – The paid ads show up in Google on the right sidebar, this piece of information tells you what position (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.) it shows up on the page.

Conversion – When you set up your paid search campaigns you can also set up a way to track conversions. This is how many times the users clicks on the ads, gets to your page, and converts.

Cost per Conversion – This is the total cost of the ads divided by the number of conversions. You can think of this number as the amount of money you are paying for whatever the conversion means to your business – most likely a lead.

Conversion Rate – Another mathematical equation – the conversion rate is just the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks.

There, now you know what kind of data you’re dealing with – what should your goals be?

  1. First things first, work on getting a good quality score. This will help improve all aspects of your campaign.
  2. Improve your conversion rate. There’s no magic number for the “ideal” conversion rate, the key here is to improve on what you currently have.
  3. Reduce your CPC. Are you paying too much for keywords? Investigate the costs for each. Can you group them differently to make the campaign more effective?

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