What Google AdWords Metrics Should I Be Looking At?

Google Adwords has so many metrics and so much data, which can be very overwhelming. For many business owners, they don’t know what to look at or track. Some think that only a Google Adwords consultant can understand and interpret this data. Google makes this even harder for the average Adwords user with confusing default columns. If you don’t know your way around the interface, this can often seem overwhelming. A Google Adwords Management Agency can help you understand the data. Then by monitoring how this impacts your business, they will help optimize your account. If this is not an option for you, I will go over how to look at these numbers and determine what is essential to your business.

The Most Important Adwords Metric According to a Google AdWords Management Agency

It may come as a surprise, but the most important Google Adwords metric might not even show up on your dashboard. The most essential metric to measure is your overall profit. How much money did you spend on Adwords and how much return did you get from that?

Either way, you must come up with a way to measure your advertising campaigns’ overall profitability. Without this, all the other data points in Google Adwords become much less meaningful. If you are working with a Google Adwords consultant, they can help you come up with this number. Make sure they are aware of your business goals and profitability targets.

Metrics Google Adwords Consultant Monitor

Now beyond overall profitability, there are metrics that are important to monitor. This is different from account to account and varies depending on your strategy. As each case is highly variable, I will not be giving “hard-target” in the article. For example, saying that every account must have a CTR of 5% or higher is not something one can measure. That said, I will go over the most important metrics to analyze and what they mean for your account. Also, I will assume there is a baseline of conversion tracking in your account. If you have no conversion setup, please seek out the help of a Google Adwords Management Agency or Google Adwords Consultant.

“Cost per conversion” or (Cost per Action) – “CPA” per product or service. It’s essential to have different CPA goals for the products or services offered by your business. Then, optimize your campaigns towards these goals.

Cost – This is fairly straightforward. Higher spend campaigns, ad groups, and keywords have a larger impact on your account. A keyword with a great CPA but only $10 in spend is unlikely to have a significant effect on your bottom line. Conversely, if a keyword is 90% of your spend in a high volume campaign, changes to this keywords will have a high impact. To keep it simple, you need to prioritize by cost.

Quality Score – Quality Score is a metric Google uses to judge the relevance of your keywords. A higher quality score means your keywords are more relevant to the searches. This will allow you to have cheaper CPCs due to the Google Adwords Ad rank formula.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) – CTR is clicks divided by impression. With a higher click-thru rate comes a higher Quality Score. Due to this, CPCs decrease and you get more users to your website.

Conversion Rate – This shows how many of the users that clicked on an ad performed a conversion action. Using the conversion rate, you can make sure the traffic is going to the correct pages and monitor landing page performance.

Google Adwords is both an art and a science, which means that you not only need to interpret the data but understand how it impacts your business. A good Google Adwords consultant will be able to merge the data with Google Adwords and your business’s specific needs. If you cannot reach out to a Google AdWords consultant, I hope this article provides a launchpad for your Google Adwords knowledge.