You know what gets me CRANKY? You’d be surprised at the number of clients that we deal with that during the initial discovery process we find out that they have not linked Google AdWords to their Google Analytics accounts!

You’d expect that this would be one of the fundamental steps that any advertiser would be doing…but in at least 1/3 of the people who come to us, it’s not configured correctly.

Other than the obvious benefits of visibility into user actions, and behavior you can also import Analytics Goals into Adwords which can improve your conversion tracking and your ROAS (return on ad spend) calculations. But before you use these features you really need to understand the reasons to incorporate Analytics into your AdWords campaigns.  The basics include insights into ad performance and the ability to increase cost-effectiveness by acting on key information. The powerful data that can be gleaned includes:

Session Duration. The amount of time that a visitor spends browsing on a site, and/or the average time all visitors spend on the site. (Is your site “sticky” enough to keep users hanging around?)

Bounce Rate. This is the percentage of browsing sessions that involve just one page viewed before moving on to another website. (Is your site compelling enough to keep them browsing?)

Pages Per Session. The average number of pages a visitor views while on the site. (Does each page on your site encourage users to stay awhile, or are there lots of “dead ends”?)

In-Page Analytics. In-Page Analytics as part of a Paid Search Advanced Segment allows for reporting on how website users specifically interact with pages, paving the way for refining them.

New Sessions. Percentage of first-time browsers new to the site. (Are fresh sets of eyes finding your site every day?)

Reporting. The Google Analytics AdWords reporting suite is another valuable feature of this pairing. AdWords reports include insights about campaigns, user locations, devices used, keyword positions, e-commerce behaviors, and much more.

Event Tracking. Event Tracking plus Advanced Segments can track behavioral aspects of paid search users. Site activities like video plays, PDF downloads, newsletter signups and social shares can all be tracked.

Custom Alerts. Google Analytics also offers the option of custom alerts that can be configured to monitor any aspect of your website traffic. Alerts can be customized or set to watch for anomalies in the interest of managing budgets or capitalizing on untapped queries. Advanced Segments can further isolate subgroups of traffic or be applied to historic data to understand relational behaviors between categories.

Meeting Your Goals

The Goal Flow feature can help to identify any barriers your site has to conversion, showing the top entrance and exit points plus where users lag due to confusion. Multi-Channel Funnels and the output and reporting of all of this data can be customized as well.

Ultimately, the optimal use of Google Analytics with AdWords aligns the two in a way that allows the use of an advertising budget in a more intelligent and effective manner.

Are you ready for better AdWords marketing ROI? Let us help you to optimize your AdWords account.