Peanut butter and chocolate. Simon and Garfunkel. Apache Junction and a competent dentist. Paid search and analytics.

All marriages made in heaven.

One of the most underutilized resources in a PPC professional’s tool box is a great analytics platform. Here I’ll provide three basic and five slightly advanced reporting techniques that you can use within Google Analytics to effectively monitor and improve your paid search campaigns.

The Basic Analytics Reports

1. Simple Search Status
There are two simple methods to see how your paid search program is performing at a high level within analytics.

First, apply the paid search advanced segments option located at the top right of the Dashboard. Deselect All Visits and check Paid Search Traffic.

Another way to show paid search performance by engine is by accessing your search engines report. This is located within Traffic Sources / Search Engines.

Simply click the ‘paid’ option underneath the line graph to see performance for your paid search campaigns.

What This Report Tells You
This report is especially useful when comparing visits, time on site, revenue, transactions/leads and bounce rate between the major engines. Conversion rate and per visit value are also important metrics.

2. Branded vs. Non-Branded
Many paid search marketers bid for their own brand name. While many feel this may be a cannibalistic approach to driving traffic from your own brand name, it can certainly work in many cases. However, there are many good reasons to do so. I recommend testing to determine the ROI of brand keyword bidding vs. avoiding this method completely.

If you do choose to bid on your own brand or company name, here’s a simple way to track performance:

Go to Traffic Sources / Keywords
Choose to show ‘paid’ as in the example above.
Near the bottom of the keyword list within this report, you will see the following:

Filter your list by entering your brand name and hit ‘Go’. Here you will see a new report containing stats for keyword phrases that include your brand.

Now run a separate report excluding your brand name. Hit ‘Go’, and compare the data from the previous report.

What This Report Tells You
Know how much of an impact your brand name has on your paid search campaigns. You may also find unique keyword variations such as ‘your brand name product’ or ‘your brand name service’ that will help determine how popular different facets of your business are among the searching populace.

When trying to determine whether or not to bid on brand terms, again my suggestion is to test. Use flights carefully (e.g. one week on and one week off) and rely on percentages as opposed to aggregates. Run the same brand keyword filtering reports, but remember to show paid vs. non-paid performance for the appropriate date ranges.

3. Campaign Tracking
Campaign tracking is very helpful but requires consistent campaign naming convention within Google and Bing. You must also tag your URLs appropriately to include the correct tracking code.

I typically use one of two methods for appending a destination URL with the correct tracking code.

Method A: Google’s URL Builder

Method B: An Excel Formula
See columns A through G below. You can populate your sheet with as many rows of data as you like. Please note that the highlighted row should contain your own data.

In column G, paste the following formula on each row. The example below will work for Row 2 in your Excel document (hence the references to A2, B2, C2, etc), but just paste the formula in each corresponding row and you should be fine.

Hint: Use Paste Special / Paste Formula. Then replace all open spaces with a “+”.

=CONCATENATE(F2,IF(ISERROR(FIND(“?”,F2,1))=TRUE,
CONCATENATE(“?”),CONCATENATE(“&”)),
“utm_campaign=”,A2,”&utm_medium=”,B2,”
&utm_source=”,C2,IF(D2<>”-”,CONCATENATE
(“&utm_content=”,D2),),IF(E2<>”-”,
CONCATENATE(“&utm_term=”,E2),))

Once you have tracking code placed and all Campaign names are consistent across engines, you can build out campaign data in analytics. To view individual campaign performance, simply to go Traffic Sources / Campaigns. Here you’ll find an aggregated list of campaigns for a selected date range.

What This Report Tells You
Simply put, know which campaigns are performing and which need improvement. Adjust bids, daily budgets, ads and keywords to modify visit tallies. Focus on your landing page and site experience to improve conversion rate and transaction efficiency.

Advanced PPC Reporting Techniques

4. Engine Advanced Filters
The report referenced in #1 above provides specific information for each engine’s performance. However, there is much more that can be gleaned from the Google Analytics platform. To find additional information about those visitors coming from specific engines, you can create advanced segments.

In the upper right-hand corner of the interface, click on ‘Advanced Segments’ and select the link that reads, ‘Create a new advanced segment’. This will bring you to a screen where you can drag and drop certain measurement attributes. Here’s what the advanced segment for Google CPC traffic looks like. I’ve called this one ‘AdWords’.

And since Bing powers itself and Yahoo, you can create another for adCenter.

What This Report Tells You
Once each segment is created and selected individually, you can begin to explore other areas that will give you a better indication of quality of visits from AdWords and adCenter. For instance, review visitor loyalty and trending within the Visitors section. Check out most trafficked pages, navigation summaries and exit rates in Content. Finally, review Goals and Ecommerce statistics to determine just how well AdWords and adCenter are performing with respect to individual goal conversion and/or specific product sales.
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