Hidden Pay Per Click Engagement

Conversions are king, that’s for sure, but what about when a pay per click (PPC) keyword isn’t getting conversions? Do you pause it? Some PPC management tools out there will focus on “Costly Keywords” but don’t take into consideration other site engagement metrics. But there’s more to PPC optimization than simply pausing or adding keywords!

PPC Conversion Optimization

Again, if we have a website and we are running PPC it is all about getting visitors to convert. There are a myriad of things involved in PPC optimization, but we’ll assume for this article that your keywords and ad copy are perfect (ha!). First off, make sure you have AdWords conversion tracking in place on your conversion page (eg: Thank You, Order Confirmation, Articles…). This conversion pixel should be on the same page that triggers your Google Analytics goal (because you have goal tracking set up… right??). Once tracking, you can easily see, in both Google AdWords and Google Analytics, which keywords are driving conversions. But now lets take a look at those keywords that aren’t.

PPC Site Engagement Metrics

If some keywords are not converting it is time to determine whether or not the pause them. But don’t just pause them if they aren’t converting, make sure you are pausing them because visitors are not engaging. Now, a full ‘engagement’ is a conversion, but visitors can engage with your site in other ways. We have mentioned in this column previously the importance of what we call site engagement metrics. Our focus here is simple, did a visitor try to engage with the site at all? These metrics are simply Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site and Pages per Session. These engagement metrics help you evaluate whether a keyword is good at driving an engaged audience, but maybe there is a slight alteration to a landing page or steps that would help that audience cross the finish line.
There is so much more that goes into this analysis, but just be sure you aren’t pausing keywords simply because they haven’t generated a conversion. If they are driving an audience who is looking at pages and staying a while, then perhaps there are slight changes that can be done to that funnel as opposed to selecting all new keywords. So while conversion is king, site engagement rules the castle!