PPC Campaign Concerns in Google

[seekuk]

Hi,
I am starting PPC Campaign for my site. Need some advice from your end.

My site is getting lots of hits everyday & I am generating good amount of leads in my site, through organic listings ( MSN, Google, yahoo)

Now since I want to run PPC in Google & Overture, The question which comes in my mind is HOW DO I KEEP A TRACK OF HITS I RECIEVE FROM PPC.

That is how do I calculate the ROI, as the same page ( www.seek.uk.com/index.html) is being hit by Organic Results & the same would get hit by PPC campaign. I would not be able to make out, which traffic is coming from PPC & which from organic listings.

Now a friend of mine was facing the same problem. What he has done is, he has made a folder say test in the site & copied the entire site over there. Say (www.seek.uk.com/test). Over here he has blindly copied all the pages of the site.

Though the site is not linked from the main site in anyways. Now since a new folder has been created so, the URL's have changed.

But the content is same; the URL's are different, as now it is:
www.seek.uk.com/test/personal-loans.html. RATHER THAN
www.seek.uk.com/personal-loans.html

My concern over here is that is this the right way to see the traffic from PPC. or some other method can be used.

& will Google for that go, crawl this folder ever & could be could BAN his site, because of duplicate content. ( though this folder is not linked with the main site in anyways)

I hope, U have understood my concern.

Please give your valuable Inputs.

Thanx
-Seekuk

[nametaginc]

Since paid advertising, PPC, is different from your organic placement, it has been suggested that you write and present your PPC different than you would for SEO on your organic pages.

By following this logic, you can create various PPC pages that are different from your organic page on the same subject; therefore, you can help eliminate creating duplicate content. Furthermore, since you don't need search engines to search and index these PPC pages, you can simply add their URLs into your robot txt and prevent the search engines from indexing them in the first place.

As for tracking the traffic and conversion from your PPC, my method is to create and monitor your PPC pages.

For example, if you sell jewelry, you may have a standard web page, search engine optimized, named "gold-bracelet.html". You could then create a PPC page in Adwords, with different content, tone, sales pitch, etc. named "PPC-gold-bracelet.html", that is included your robot txt file as a page not be indexed. By separating the two, when you check through your logs you should see individual traffic for both "gold-bracelet.html" and "PPC-gold-bracelet.html".

With the proper Google tracking code implemented on your sales/landing page, when someone makes a purchase that was directed to your site through your PPC page, than that sale should be counted as a conversion by Google. When you check your reports through Adwords it should appear there as a conversion as well.

Hopefully this helps.

[mike@ceu-hours.com]

I use ROI Pro for this. It is not an exact science, but so far (7-8 months) the java redirects have never failed and it gives some idea on conversion.

http://www.mitridat.com/clients-portfolio-appz-roi.html

[adebold]

I certainly wouldn't go down the folder / copied site route. Even without the duplicate content risk, the administrative overhead must be a nightmare.

Without getting into the details of PPC landing pages, I would ensure that each ad destination URL in Google has a specific tracking URL in this format:

http://www.seek.uk.com/destinationpa...p=2&creative=3

As already mentioned in an earlier reply, add Google's conversion tracking code to your checkout/thank you page.

Personally I use ClickTracks Analyzer to then analyse specific actions but if that is a bit excessive for you needs I would think you could get the data you need from your site's log analyzer within cpanel.

I hope this helps.

[incrediblehelp]

Don't create separate pages for PPC and for your natural or organic website. It would be a huge nightmare to maintain. Get a tool to track conversions for you like www.clicktracks.com or one of the many others out there:

http://www.atlasonepoint.com/
http://www.conversionruler.com/
http://www.coremetrics.com/

Yahoo/Overture even offers their own internal tracking system for free. I think Google might offer something similar if you have Google Analytics as well.

[rachit]

Hi seekuk,

There are two very simple solutions to your problem of tracking ROI and sales from PPC campaigns.


Method 1.

Track your performance from within Google AdWords & Yahoo Search Marketing. If you follow their suggested method of placing a snippet on your thank-you page ... they will easily track the number of conversions & cost per conversion for you.


This way, you can track PPC ROI from within those systems. However, I have a feeling that this will skew your existing tracking system and you won't be able to differentiate between SEO and PPC sales.



Method 2.

Use a web analytics system.

If you're on a budget, just use Google Analytics ... it is a wonderfully capable system, and it will automatically differentiate SEO sales, PPC sales and other medium sales.

If you have the cash, invest in similar competing systems like ClickTracks. I'm sure you can find a discussion somewhere that discusses good analytics system.




Personally, I use tracking from inside AdWords & Overture ... as it allows me to keep an eye on the vital statistics while I'm tuning up the campaign.

regards,
Rachit

[nametaginc]

I have differing opinions about creating and maintaining both organic and PPC pages.

On one hand as incrediblehelp mentioned, it creates a maintainance nightmare; however, on the other hand, you can typically create a much more focused page when you specialize for a particular keyword with your PPC page.

In many cases when a person clicks on your PPC ad they already know what they want, therefore, if you use just your standard, organic landing page you present redundant information that is specialized for SEO. If however, you have a PPC page that is specialized and more direct, you can usually create more immediate call to action.

This is simply my opinion, anyone else have any other input/comment on PPC vs. Organic pages?

As for tracking PPCs, usually your logs can present your most visited pages, visit lengths, etc. With this information you can usually track to see how many people visited your site via PPC, how long they stayed, path followed, etc. Or as the other posters have suggested, programs as Clicktracks can be used to further analyze your information. Not sure if you want to pay for the service or if a basic analysis from your logs is sufficient.

Personally, I have not used Clicktracks, though I was on the verge of having my company purchase the software. However, yesterday Google finally responded to my request for its free Analytics. It is still gathering information about my website, so I don't know how effective it is, but if I can get enough information from it then maybe we won't need Clicktracks after all.

So perhaps using Google's Analytics, along with Adwords, can provide you with enough information without having to pay for 3rd party software.

[frogmanandy]

As long as you choose to trust Google and Yahoo, I think you will find that their tracking info and reports are fairly good. The google analytics tool has become a favored resource for me.

I agree with Incredible that it would really create a lot more work and possibly duplicate content to create pages for your ppc only.

I do strongly advise choosing direct landing pages for most products though. It really depends on whether you expect to sell them more stuff or just one product.

We direct our ppc by product ie a ppc for Maui luau will land directly on our Maui luau page. A term like Maui activities may go directly to our Maui homepage while, hawaii activities will go to our index page.

www.hawaiidiscountactivities.com

[SemAdvance]

Actually I have to disagree with a few of the posters in this thread.

running a Pay Per Click campaign you should create individual landing pages.

As campaigns can be run for lead generation or e-commerce sales, telephone calls, etc your pages should reflect what actions you want your visitors to take.

SEO organic pages usually contain lots of content however in PPC marketing you want to limit text using it to force and funnel your prospect.

An easy way to manage PPC pages is to build a folder on your server labeled PPC and place all your landing pages inside.

Your can then block the spiders from the folder via robots.txt or .htaccess.

Any tracking scripts will usually work and by placing the pages in the folder you will easily see the hits to those pages in your webhosts stats or log files.

Remember to optimize your landing pages like you would a page for organic results... but no need to worry about the amount of content or keyword density.

My findings and thoughts.

Clint

[ditto]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the simplest and most flexible method of tracking your PPC ads...

Add a variable to your url
eg seek.uk.com?campaign=1

Then it's just a case of checking your log files.

But you can take this a lot further
eg seek.uk.com?keyword=your keyword

This way you can track individual keywords in real-time!

You're probably thinking it would be a nightmare to create one ad for each keyword?

It would, but there's a method to create the url variable on the fly. :) I mean actively grab the searched for keyword.

What this does is allow you to take the keyword directly from the searched for term at Google and send it over to your site via the variable.

Take this further still...

Grab that keyword and throw it on to your landing page in real-time!

What you've got now is a dynamic landing page tailored to each visitor based on exactly what they've searched for on Google!!

How much will that boost your ROI? ;) As they see the exact term they've just searched for on your page!

And yes I agree with the last poster you should definately have a landing page specific to your ppc campaigns.

You can find out how to do all of the above, including the code you need, plus a whole load of other advanced PPC techniques free by signing up for my Adwords Mini Course here -

www.ppcaccelerator.com

It will improve your ROI and open your eyes to other ways of utilizing Adwords to increase your online income. ;)

#note - Mods I realise I'm doing a little advertising here but I believe the course will solve your readers problems. Please delete if in appropriate. ;)

[jacobwissler]

In the past two years, I have only seen two clients make a profit from PPC. They were selling very high ticket items, in one case it was homes in an expensive part of Houston, the other was a cancer doctor. They could afford to spend $500 to obtain one customer and make a great profit.

For the average business, I have seen clients generate a lot cash flow but not enough to pay for the clicks and overhead - at the end of the day it was a loss. Unless you are selling very high ticket item, be careful with PPC.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Actually I have to disagree with a few of the posters in this thread.

running a Pay Per Click campaign you should create individual landing pages.

As campaigns can be run for lead generation or e-commerce sales, telephone calls, etc your pages should reflect what actions you want your visitors to take.

SEO organic pages usually contain lots of content however in PPC marketing you want to limit text using it to force and funnel your prospect.

An easy way to manage PPC pages is to build a folder on your server labeled PPC and place all your landing pages inside.

Your can then block the spiders from the folder via robots.txt or .htaccess.

Any tracking scripts will usually work and by placing the pages in the folder you will easily see the hits to those pages in your webhosts stats or log files.

Remember to optimize your landing pages like you would a page for organic results... but no need to worry about the amount of content or keyword density.

My findings and thoughts.

Clint

I agree Clint with your post somewhat, but this is just your opinion as I have my own. To suggest to newbie's to do this is not a good idea. This would be a web maintenance nightmare. I can see the benefits of a more experienced marketer having a different landing page for some business, but if I speaking on global basis I don't see why a page the spiders sees should sell itself differently form one a PPC visitor sees.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Actually I have to disagree with a few of the posters in this thread.

running a Pay Per Click campaign you should create individual landing pages.

As campaigns can be run for lead generation or e-commerce sales, telephone calls, etc your pages should reflect what actions you want your visitors to take.

SEO organic pages usually contain lots of content however in PPC marketing you want to limit text using it to force and funnel your prospect.

An easy way to manage PPC pages is to build a folder on your server labeled PPC and place all your landing pages inside.

Your can then block the spiders from the folder via robots.txt or .htaccess.

Any tracking scripts will usually work and by placing the pages in the folder you will easily see the hits to those pages in your webhosts stats or log files.

Remember to optimize your landing pages like you would a page for organic results... but no need to worry about the amount of content or keyword density.

My findings and thoughts.

Clint

I agree Clint with your post somewhat, but this is just your opinion as I have my own. To suggest to newbie's to do this is not a good idea. This would be a web maintenance nightmare. I can see the benefits of a more experienced marketer having a different landing page for some business, but if I speaking on global basis I don't see why a page the spiders sees should sell itself differently form one a PPC visitor sees.

[mattjk]

Originally Posted by jacobwissler

In the past two years, I have only seen two clients make a profit from PPC.

With all due respect, I'd suggest you should re-evaluate your campaign keywords / ads / landing pages in that case.

We (as in the company I work for) have done very little to optimise our AdWords campaigns, and they generate about twice the spend-amount in profit (is that 100% ROI? Or 200%?).

To the original poster, most of your options have already been discussed in this thread. We went down the in-house analytics route, and wrote our own referral/visitor tracking code. I think it's probably the best cost vs. benefit option if you have the necessary coding & database skills, and it's certainly the most flexible.

[nelsonez]

I have to agree with incrediblehelp as he/she pointed out the one fact others are forgetting. The original poster stated they were somewhat of a newbie.

While most have all stated things that will work I think the easiest solution is to just take advantage of the tracking script that the Adwords account offers. That will help identify only the Google PPC conversions and which keywords are converting the best and which are converting the worst.

Like a couple others mentioned the adcopies should always be tagged with some type of "?source=googleppc" or any varient or combination.

PPC account would be distinguished as "sales_page.htm?source=googelppc" whereas all the direct requests would just be "sales_page.htm"

It is very easy to distinguish this in your traffic logs and depending on what type of analytics program you use you can do all kinds of different segmented analysis.

If you can get signed up for the Google Analytics program I highly recommend it. We haven't done any validation analysis to determine how accurate it is but it does provide all kinds of useful reports.

[AxiomTrend]

incrediblehelp wrote:
Don't create separate pages for PPC and for your natural or organic website. It would be a huge nightmare to maintain. Get a tool to track conversions for you like www.clicktracks.com or one of the many others out there:

http://www.atlasonepoint.com/
http://www.conversionruler.com/
http://www.coremetrics.com/

Yahoo/Overture even offers their own internal tracking system for free. I think Google might offer something similar if you have Google Analytics as well.

Another good one is www.keywordmax.com. Personally I really like Atlas OnePoint, (though they do have some bug issues here and there, but who doesn't.) But I have used Atlas OnePoint for about 4 years and it has helped me achieve excellent ROI's, anywhere from a 200% - 600% return, and that's not on high ticketed items. That's on an average sale of $100.

But as has been stated both Yahoo and Google do have their own tracking. I'm not very fond of Yahoo's. Google's on the other hand is pretty good, and Google's customer support has always been excellent for me in helping me with any of my needs in usings their products. And the great thing there too is it's free with Google, so I would recommend using their PPC tracking and Analytics.

It looks like your site is a portal, rather than selling goods/services on your site its self, so conversion tracking, (other than on leads,) wouldn't do anything for you. But you certainly can track PPC traffic and the activity/behavior of that traffic on your site with the tools that Google provides free.

As far as the landing page goes, you can create unique landing pages but probably don't need to. Chances are the pages/content you already have is sufficient. I would just recommend a simple rule of thumb though, (which should be abvious but people miss this sometimes,) and that's just send the PPC clicks to the most appropriate page on your site relating to the keyword you are bidding on. Take the visitor directly to what they are looking for so they don't have to search through your site to find the information/page to find what they are looking for. Taking them right to what they are looking for will really help you achieve a good ROI on your PPC spend.

[AxiomTrend]

incrediblehelp wrote:
Don't create separate pages for PPC and for your natural or organic website. It would be a huge nightmare to maintain. Get a tool to track conversions for you like www.clicktracks.com or one of the many others out there:

http://www.atlasonepoint.com/
http://www.conversionruler.com/
http://www.coremetrics.com/

Yahoo/Overture even offers their own internal tracking system for free. I think Google might offer something similar if you have Google Analytics as well.

Another good one is www.keywordmax.com. Personally I really like Atlas OnePoint, (though they do have some bug issues here and there, but who doesn't.) But I have used Atlas OnePoint for about 4 years and it has helped me achieve excellent ROI's, anywhere from a 200% - 600% return, and that's not on high ticketed items. That's on an average sale of $100.

But as has been stated both Yahoo and Google do have their own tracking. I'm not very fond of Yahoo's. Google's on the other hand is pretty good, and Google's customer support has always been excellent for me in helping me with any of my needs in usings their products. And the great thing there too is it's free with Google, so I would recommend using their PPC tracking and Analytics.

It looks like your site is a portal, rather than selling goods/services on your site its self, so conversion tracking, (other than on leads,) wouldn't do anything for you. But you certainly can track PPC traffic and the activity/behavior of that traffic on your site with the tools that Google provides free.

As far as the landing page goes, you can create unique landing pages but probably don't need to. Chances are the pages/content you already have is sufficient. I would just recommend a simple rule of thumb though, (which should be abvious but people miss this sometimes,) and that's just send the PPC clicks to the most appropriate page on your site relating to the keyword you are bidding on. Take the visitor directly to what they are looking for so they don't have to search through your site to find the information/page they are looking for. Taking them right to what they are looking for will really help you achieve a good ROI on your PPC spend.