5 Stats to Begin Analyzing Your Performance

Visits vs. Clicks: First, lets tackle a basic, but slightly confusing stat. Within Google Analytics, clicks indicate how many times your advertisements were clicked by users. Visitors indicates the number of actual unique sessions that are initiated by your visitors. According to Google, there are a few reasons why these numbers will not be the same:

• A visitor may click your ad multiple times. When one person clicks on one advertisement multiple times in the same session, AdWords will record multiple clicks while Analytics recognizes the separate pageviews as one visit. This is a common behavior among visitors engaging in comparison shopping.
• A user may click on an ad, and then later, during a different session, return directly to the site through a bookmark. The referral information from the original visit will be retained in this case, so the one click will result in multiple visits.
• A visitor may click on your advertisement, but prevent the page from fully loading by navigating to another page or by pressing their browser’s Stop button. In this case, the Analytics tracking code is unable to execute and send tracking data to the Google servers. However, AdWords will still register a click.
• To ensure more accurate billing, Google AdWords automatically filters invalid clicks from your reports. However, Analytics reports these clicks as visits to your website in order to show the complete set of traffic data.

New vs. Returning Visitors: Depending on the goals of your PPC campaign, you can interpret these stats in a couple different ways. If your percent of new visitors is predominant within your account, this means that you are successfully driving new visitors/traffic to your site. If you have a high percentage of returning visitors this could indicate that your site’s content is engaging to your users, and they are returning multiple times. To delve further into your visitor’s behavior, you can explore the “Visitor Loyalty” reports.
Knowing this data can shed some light on your PPC campaign by allowing you to determine the percent of new visitors to your site. With a PPC campaign, you will want to have a higher percent of new visitors as you try to acquire sales & leads.
Average page views per visitor: Average page views is another metric that can indicate the quality of your traffic. A high average page views per visitor is a sign that you are generating the right kind of traffic and your content engages your audience. If this stat is low, then this means that something is not working properly with your site, or your traffic isn’t as targeted as it could be.
Your conversion rate can be tied to your average page views per visitor. If users are not engaged in your site, then they certainly aren’t going to purchase your product or request additional information (if you are sending your traffic directly to your website, not a one-page landing page).
Bounce rate: Actually, Google has a pretty good definition of this term so I’ll let them take if from here: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.
Use this metric to measure visitor quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that your site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and advertisement that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.
Average time on site: This metric means exactly what it measures; the average time that users spend on your site. Again, this metric is also tied to the quality of your traffic. If visitors stay on your site for an extended period of time, then they are engaged and exploring what your site has to offer. Keep in mind, time on site can be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site.

Don't Make This Mistake When Opening A New PPC Account!

The problem:

The advertiser opened a new Google Adwords account and generated no impressions or clicks for days. When he went to look at the ad diagnostics tool, it said that campaign had already exceeded his daily budget. How could he have exceeded his campaign budget if he's never received any impressions or clicks?

The mistake:

The mistake the advertiser made was he set his keyword bids too high, and his daily budgets were too low. This combination can cause a lot of frustration when first beginning a new account. Google thinks that if it starts showing the ads and people click on them, they won't be able to shut them off in enough time to not go over budget, so they just turn it off as soon as it is turned on.

The fix:

Simply lower your bids or increase your daily budget. Once the advertiser did this, his ads immediately began showing. There was no technical problem with the account or with Google.

Yahoo Is Going to Automatically Optimize Your PPC Account Without You

Yahoo is going to optimize your PPC account without prior knowledge of or approval by advertisers.
The one major change that is important to Yahoo advertisers is listed under the “Sponsored Search and Content Match Program Terms” section and is copied below:

OPTIMIZATION. In the U.S. only, for those advertisers not bound by an Insertion Order, we may help you optimize your account(s). Accordingly, you expressly agree that we may also: (i) create ads, (ii) add and/or remove keywords, and/or (iii) optimize your account(s). We will notify you via email of such changes made to your account(s), and can also include a spreadsheet of such changes upon your written request. If you would like any of such changes reversed, please reply to such email within 14 days of the change(s), and we will make commercially reasonable efforts to reverse the change(s) you specifically identify. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you remain responsible for all changes made to your account(s), including all click charges incurred prior to any reversions being made. It is your responsibility to monitor your account(s) and to ensure that your account settings are consistent with your business objectives.

According to Yahoo: “essentially, this means that Yahoo! will automatically go into an account and optimize the ads and keywords in the account without prior knowledge of or approval by advertisers. This program is designed to help optimize your account to its fullest potential. We optimize accounts on a daily basis and are in tune with dynamic changes in the marketplace, and know the tactics and strategies that have proven successful on the Yahoo! network. Any changes we make to your account will be very carefully selected, and are designed to help you become a more successful advertiser with Sponsored Search.”
Accounts are automatically opted into this program as long as they are on prepay terms (no invoiced accounts bound by an Insertion Order will be opted into this program). Accounts can be opted out of this program. To do this, Yahoo needs this requested in writing. You can send the email requesting to be opted out of the automatic optimization program directly to your Yahoo Customer Representative. Since this is done on an account by account basis, it is important that you call out whether you want specific accounts (list the account name and number) opted out or all of your accounts opted out.
If you don’t want Yahoo to automatically optimize your PPC account, you will have to submit this in writing.