Let’s take care of the basics first. To be able to use ‘Revenue-per-click’, you will need to have set up goals within Google Analytics (GA) and assigned a value to each goal set up. The value of a goal is the revenue a conversion on that goal brings to you. You can set goal values during the goal set up process or return to the ‘Profile Settings’ page to assign/edit values to existing goals.

Revenue per click is calculated as follows: Goal Value x Conversion Rate.

As such, ‘Revenue-per-click’ (RPC) simply allocates a value to every paid click.

Comparing what you earned per click to your average CPC will give you a quick indication on the profitability of a given keyword. As such, RPC can help you to identify ‘problem’ keywords that may be adversely affecting your campaign.

Example:

If you receive 10 clicks on a keyword and 2 goal conversions at £20, your revenue per click is

£20 x 20% = £4

i.e. each click is worth £4.

What does this tell me?

It tells you that if your website keeps converting at 20%, then you break-even at an average CPC of £4 on a conversion of £20 value.

However, if your average CPC for the keyword is £5, then you are spending £1 more for every click than you are earning from it. Therefore, you’ll effectively be making a loss of £1 with every click on your ad.

Conversely, if your average CPC is £3, then you’re making £1 in profit per click.

How to view ‘Revenue-per-click’ reports:

1. Log in to your GA account.

2. From the side navigation panel, select ‘Traffic Sources’, then select AdWords^Beta.

3. Select an option from the sub-menu to look at data in an overview or by campaigns (click on campaign name on the right-hand side to get data for the campaign ad groups), keywords, day parts, etc.

4. From the main view on-screen, select the ‘Clicks’ tab and find the RPC column on the right-hand side in the main view.

How do you make a loss-making keyword profitable?

a) Lower your average CPC. However, do bear in mind that significantly lower ad positions might also affect your conversion rate, thereby negating any potentially positive affect. Hence, we advise that if your average CPC is higher than your RPC, you should try lowering your CPC gradually to find the ’sweet spot’ which is where your keyword spends less enough per click but still converts at an acceptably high rate to start earning profits for you.

Alternatively, you can try to lower your average CPC by improving your keyword Quality Score. In the earlier example, you were converting on a keyword at 20%, earning £4 per click. If your average CPC on that keyword was £5, you were making a loss of £1 per click. If you can improve the Quality Score of the keyword, you may find that you can reduce your bids without necessarily dropping down to a lower ad position.

b) Improve your site conversion rate. You might do this by testing new landing pages, forms etc.

These methods can be tried alone but it is generally a good idea to try both (together or one-by-one) for best results.

What if I do not have goal conversion values, only target CPAs?

No problem. Just use your target CPAs as goal values in your GA account/profiles. All you have to do is work to break even.

A Word of Warning…

Before undertaking a major optimisation project make sure that you have a representative data set to balance out any peaks/troughs due to external factors.

Also, it is important to bear in mind that availability of granular data like GA makes possible can lead you to create an ‘over-optimised’ campaign that converts at fantastic rates and with low costs, but fails to deliver sufficient volume. A good adwords campaign will strike the balance between driving cost-effective leads/sales and driving volume.

The seven deadly sins have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers against vice. Today I’ll be using them to illustrate the potential pitfalls in paid search…

Whilst falling prey to these sins is unlikely to see you in one of Dante’s nine circles; chances are you will be adversely affecting your campaign; and so, without further ado – I give you the seven deadly sins of PPC…

Wrath

Also known as anger or rage; wrath encompasses both actions against others, and indeed self-denial. It also includes the desire to seek revenge, and generally wishing to do harm to others. In PPC such acts of wrath might include clicking on your competitors ads in order to run down their budget…

Don’t do it. Google in particular are pretty good at spotting click fraud so chances are your efforts are being wasted in any case. Your time and energy would be much better spent focusing on improving your own campaign.

Avarice

More commonly quoted as greed, avarice is an excessive pursuit of wealth – perhaps at the cost of everything else. Now in PPC terms this perhaps isn’t quite so sinful; unless of course it’s misguided. Are you so busy ensuring you’ve covered every conceivable keyword that you’ve forgotten to optimise your campaign and focus on what actually works? If you’re in e-commerce are your prices competitive? Alternatively it may be that you’ve swung the other way entirely – in your quest for a perfectly optimised campaign you’ve created a narrowly targeted campaign which works brilliantly from a cost per acquisition/sale point of view; but fails to deliver the volume you really need.

Envy

Envy can cause poor PPC management decisions. You see your competitor consistently appearing for a set of keywords (often head terms) which despite rounds and rounds of testing you’ve never managed to make work for you. You think, how are they making that work? Why is it that they can make it work and I can’t? Focus on your own campaign and your own objectives. Many companies run ‘loss leaders’ within otherwise successful PPC campaigns. Maybe those keywords are just that – loss leaders. Are they something you can afford? If not, pause them. Similarly, some go to great lengths to copy their competitors landing pages, just because they assume they will convert better; rather than checking their assumptions by split testing first.

Sloth

Sloth is the most common of PPC sins. If you want your campaign to deliver, you’ll need to work at it. You’ll need to consistently improve and refine your campaign – you can’t just set it up and let it run…

Pride

Pride is described as an excessive love of self. In PPC those who are overly proud probably think that there’s nothing left for them to learn. They believe that their PPC campaign is so well optimised that it really couldn’t be improved. I’d suggest that’s unlikely. No matter how well your campaign’s performing there’s always something which could stand to be improved, so continually test and learn.

Gluttony

This sin refers to the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In PPC terms this might be likened to those who regardless of the cost *want* to appear in the top spot. Appearing first isn’t always the most cost-effective place to be in terms of conversions. Sure in some instances there may be some excellent reasons for wanting to appear in the top spot; but to optimise a whole campaign with this goal in mind is wasteful in the extreme.

Lust

Ordinarily thought of as sexual in nature, I’m going to be use a little artistic license here and use Aristotle’s definition – ‘an excessive love of others’. Some believe that other people’s PPC ads are so good that all they really need to do is copy them. This is a little short-sighted – it may work in the short term, but without developing your own key selling points / benefits / points of difference etc you’re likely to fail in the long term.

Image credit Lori Greig

One of the great things about working online is that you can track and monitor virtually anything and everything. That is of course, as long as you have some sort of analytics package set up. We use Google Analytics for most of our clients. It a pretty powerful solution (when used correctly), and of course has the added advantage of being completely free… and we all like free, right?

Google Analytics is pretty easy to set up – you simply need to insert a small snippet of code into every page of your website. However, there are certain instances whereupon URL structure can adversely affect the data which you get out of the package.

For example, if you want to monitor conversions through your website via Google Analytics, the easiest way is to set up goals and funnels.

Goals are very easy to set up – all you need to do is insert the URL which all users who complete the goal hit. For example – if you were looking to track purchases, you’d probably use the ‘thank you’ page URL which users hit once the goal is completed.

Funnels are simply the steps a user has to go through in order to complete a goal. So, again taking our purchase example; step one might be a page where the user completes their name and address; step two might be where they insert their payment details; step three might be the confirm purchase page; and step four might be the thank you for purchasing page.

All of this sounds simple enough; however, you are reliant on all users hitting the same pages. Which, if a site uses Session IDs can be a problem…

We came across one such example a couple of weeks ago. We won ourselves a lovely new insurance client. Like many they were using a white label quote engine. Not unusually, the quote engine utilised dynamically generated session IDs. Ordinarily this isn’t a problem as the URLs are typically configured as follows:

www.website.co.uk/quote-form/step-one.html?uniquesessionid

These types of session IDs are simply ignored by Google Analytics, and as such you can get aggregated data on all of the users who viewed www.website.co.uk/quote-form/step-one.html – this means you can track conversions by setting up goals and funnels as normal.

However on this particular site the URLs were configured as follows:

www.website.co.uk/quote-form/uniquesessionid/step-one.html

As such a new URL was being dynamically generated for each user. This was causing problems in Google Analytics, making it impossible to track conversions via goals and funnels in the usual way.

However, there’s a nice little work around – by using a filter you can solve the problem:

Let’s use this URL as an example:  www.website.co.uk/quote-form/uniquesessionid/step-one.html

1. Login to your analytics account, however rather than clicking on ‘view reports’ click on ‘edit’.
2. You’ll be taken to your profile setting page
3. Click on add filter
4. Give your new filter an appropriate name
5. Select ‘Custom filter’
6. Select ‘Search and Replace’
7. From the Filter Field drop down list, select Request URI
8. In the Search String box insert:       quote-form/.*/
9. In the Replace String box insert:     quote-form/
10. Select ‘No’ for Case Sensitive
11. Hit ‘Save Changes’

Effectively this will filter out all of the Session IDs from the URLs – so rather than reporting on individual user’s URLs you will be able to view the data in aggregate, and set up goals and funnels as usual. Smart, huh?

*Update: This position has now been filled*

We’ve recently won some lovely new SEO & PPC clients – as such we’re recruiting a PPC/SEO Exec (your time will be split roughly 50/50 on PPC and SEO), who’ll be based in our offices in Hampton Hill, TW12 1ND.

A full job spec is detailed below; to apply please email a CV and covering letter to hannah@gravytrain.co.uk or to discuss the opportunity further call 020 8941 2364.

Reporting to:

SEM Team Manager

Duties & Responsibilities

1. Assist in the management of our client’s PPC campaigns.
2. Assist in the planning, development and implementation of strategy to improve ranking, traffic and the conversion rates of our SEO clients
3. Identify and analyse key metrics and assess the performance of campaigns, providing clients with written monthly reports
4. Day to day client liaison via phone / email / face to face
5. Keep up with industry news and developments
6. Represent the company at industry events / conferences
7. Create new business pitch documentation and attend pitches

Person Specification

Personality

A self-starter you will be driven, positive and focused on delivering high quality results for our clients.

Skills / Experience:

Essential:

1. A minimum of one year’s hands on PPC experience gained either client or agency-side
2. Excellent written and verbal communication skills
3. Strong analytical skills
4. A genuine passion for the web, online marketing and social media

Desirable:

1. University graduate
2. Be active within the online marketing community
3. Previous experience of SEO / social media / online reputation management / email marketing

Working Hours

Monday – Friday 9am – 5.30pm.

Salary

Up to  £26k per annum depending on experience

Benefits

Private health care and subsidised gym membership.

I’m often asked at what point I decide to pause a keyword in a PPC campaign. The truth is that when asked anything about PPC my response is always “it depends”.

But that would make for an extremely short, and frankly useless blog post, so I thought I’d note down the process I’d usually go through here. Hopefully you’ll find it useful

So, first things first – for those less than familiar with PPC what the devil am I talking about? Well, within a PPC (or Paid Search) campaign you select various keywords for which you’d like your ads to appear. So, if you sell blue widgets, you might decide to select a keyword like ‘buy blue widgets’.

Now any PPC manager worth their salt will continually test, learn and refine when tackling their campaigns. As such they will be experimenting with new keywords and measuring how effective (or otherwise) they are. Keywords which don’t perform get paused so ads no longer appear when a user types in that search query.

So, how do you decide when to pause a keyword?

Lets assume that you’ve been tracking conversions and you’ve a keyword which is either:

Before pausing a keyword* I’d consider the following:

1. Do you have sufficient data?

You won’t always be able to hold out for a ’statistically significant’ sample size before pausing a keyword, however if a keyword has had only ten clicks, the chances are that you’ve insufficient data to tell whether or not this keyword’s going to work out for you. Patience grasshopper.

2. Which actual queries is the keyword exposing you to?

Assuming the keyword in question is broad or phrase matched - have you checked out which actual queries you’re getting clicks from? It may be that the keyword itself isn’t a problem per se – it’s just that you need to add in some negative keywords to prevent ads showing for irrelevant terms. Within Google Adwords you can take a look at the actual queries which resulted in clicks from a particular keyword by clicking on the tick box next to the keyword in question, the click on ’see search terms’ and then ’selected’. You’ll then be able to see which queries users have actually typed in. If there’s something irrelevant there – add it as a negative.

3. Is your keyword in the right adgroup?

Take a little look and see whether or not the keyword in question really belongs in that adgroup. Is it really relevant? Could you write a more relevant ad? In some instances it’s worth moving the keyword (or indeed a group of themed keywords) into a separate adgroup; or even a separate campaign if you need to control the amount of budget you’re spending on it – with improved targeting you may find that results improve. 

4. How’s your quality score?

If your quality score for this keyword is poor then you’ll be paying more than you need to per click. If you’re paying more than you need to per click, then you’re also paying more than you need to per conversion.  Quality scores can be improved by making your ads and landing pages as relevant as possible to the keyword in question.

5. Have you tried tweaking your bids?

Your bid (combined with your quality score) will determine the position at which you ad appears. Average position can make a difference when it comes to conversions – if conversions are too costly when you’re appearing first experiment with different bids to see if you can get conversions at a lower cost by altering your position.

6. Are you sending the keyword traffic to the right landing page?

Double check that the landing page really is relevant. Could you send traffic from this keyword somewhere better?

It’s also worth checking out bounce rates via your analytics package – if bounces are particularly high then it may be that the landing page is the problem. If you suspect this is the case test out a different landing page.

7. Is that keyword commercially viable?

Let’s assume that we’re running a campaign for an e-commerce site – the keyword in question is ‘cheap ugg boots’. The problem is the prices on this site just aren’t very competitive. You can buy ugg boots cheaper elsewhere. In this instance unless you can get the product priced more competitively - it’s probably best to pause this one.

8. Consider user intent

Step away from those keyword tools. Yes, you. Just because a keyword tool suggested it does not make it relevant. You are a human being. Think like one. Does that keyword really express whatever product or service you’re looking to sell? Try googling it and see what other ads pop up. Now take a look at the natural results too. Now speak to some other human beings about what someone typing in that word or phrase is actually likely to be looking for. Oh and don’t just speak to people who also work in search, we’re not normal …erm, I mean representative.

*Just to be clear here - I don’t implement this process for *every* keyword… I’d go loopy…and there aren’t enough hours in the day. But I think nonetheless it’s useful to consider for higher volume keywords, and indeed those keywords that your gut tells you should work, but just don’t seem to be doing ‘the do’ right now.

So m’dears what did I miss out? If you’ve any tips of your own you’d care to share I’d love to hear them.

Image credit Valerie Everett