PPC Tracking for Beginners: How to Track Clicks & Conversions

What Is PPC Tracking?

Pay-per-click (PPC) tracking helps you recognize and measurement the show of your PPC selling campaigns.

You tin tally PPC ads crossed assorted platforms. Like Google Ads, Bing Ads, and societal media. This tin assistance you: 

• Raise marque awareness
• Acquire caller customers
• Drive sales
• And more

There are galore antithetic advertisement formats and outgo models. But the wide thought is: When idiosyncratic clicks connected your ad, you wage for that click. 

Let’s accidental you’re moving a pay-per-click campaign connected Google Ads. Like this 1 from a favored nutrient brand.

When you acceptable up your ads, you had to choose: 

• Search presumption (keywords) that you privation your advertisement to show for
• Your desired outgo per click (CPC) for each hunt word (also known arsenic a keyword bid)
• The full disposable fund for your ad

When you way your PPC ad, you’ll astir apt privation to recognize things like:

• How galore radical saw your ads and made a purchase?
• Which ads and keywords thrust the astir purchases?
• How is your instrumentality connected concern (ROI)?

This is wherever pay-per-click tracking comes in. It helps you recognize however your assemblage interacts with your ads. From seeing the ad, to clicking the ad, to taking immoderate benignant of meaningful enactment (known arsenic a conversion). The conversion is apt a acquisition oregon thing that likewise benefits your brand.

By keeping an oculus connected cardinal metrics similar clicks and conversions, you spot what’s moving and what’s not. 

Benefits of PPC Tracking

PPC tracking helps you recognize advertisement performance. Both your competitors’ and your own. 

The resulting insights person galore advantages, specified as: 

• Ad optimization: Fine-tune your campaigns by adjusting keywords, advertisement copy, targeting, and bidding strategies to thrust amended results
• Efficient fund allocation: Figure retired which ads are performing (and which are not) truthful you tin allocate your fund efficaciously and thrust much ROI 
• Competitive advantage: Use penetration into the keywords, messaging, and channels your competitors are utilizing to usher your ain strategy

Tracking is an indispensable constituent of your wide PPC strategy. But for your tracking to beryllium effective, you request to cognize which metrics to watch. 

Key PPC Tracking Metrics 

Here are the main PPC tracking metrics you should support an oculus on. And what each 1 reveals astir your run performance:

• Average position: Where, connected average, your advertisement appeared connected the hunt results page. A higher presumption often leads to much visibility and clicks.
• Impressions: How galore times your advertisement was displayed. Use this metric to gauge the visibility of your ads and the size of your reach.
• Clicks:How galore times your advertisement has been clicked. A bully denotation of however overmuch traction you’re presently getting connected your ad.
• Click-through complaint (CTR): The ratio of impressions to clicks. It shows you however effectual your advertisement is astatine encouraging viewers to instrumentality action. And apt reflects the prime of your copy, offer, oregon graphic display.
• Conversion rate: The percent of clicks that led to a desired action, specified arsenic a acquisition oregon signup. This is cardinal for knowing the effectiveness of your ads successful driving concern outcomes.
• Website visits: How galore visitors came to your website from your ads. It's important for knowing the measurement of postulation PPC contributes to your site.
• App interactions: The fig of engagements wrong your app that resulted from advertisement clicks. This is important for campaigns aimed astatine promoting app usage.
• Phone calls: If your ads see a telephone option, PPC telephone tracking measures however galore calls were made straight from your ads. It's indispensable for businesses that trust connected telephone calls to link with customers.
• Import from different sources: This involves tracking conversions that started with a click connected your advertisement but were completed elsewhere, similar successful an app oregon offline. It provides a much implicit representation of however your ads lend to conversions.
• Quality score: Google's standing of the prime and relevance of your keywords and PPC ads. It reflects the wellness of your PPC run and impacts outgo and effectiveness. A higher prime people tin pb to little costs and amended advertisement positioning. 

Monitoring these metrics enables you to recognize however your PPC campaigns are performing. Evaluate the results and marque changes if needed. 

How to Track PPC Metrics

Position Tracking

Semrush’s Position Tracking instrumentality is simply a PPC tracking solution that helps you show the visibility of your campaigns. It provides invaluable information, specified as:

• Your mean position
• Top keywords
• Ranking distribution

To get started, unfastened the tool. And prime “+ Project.” Then participate your domain and springiness the task a name. Click “Create project” erstwhile you’re done.

In the “Targeting” window, prime your hunt motor (like Google oregon Bing), device, location, and name. Then click “Continue To Keywords.”

Now, adhd keywords. Do this manually. Or, click “Import from…” and you’ll spot much options.

The astir close mode to way your PPC keywords successful Semrush is to export the keywords from your Google Ads oregon Microsoft advertizing relationship to a CSV file. 

To bash this successful Google Ads, navigate to “Audiences, keyword and content” and past click “Search keywords.” Then deed the “Download” fastener and take “.csv” format.

Alternatively, click the “Google Analytics” enactment to import the keyword information from there. Or prime “Semrush suggestions” to person the keyword information filled successful automatically. Just take the fig of keywords to adhd and deed “Import.”

Decide if you privation to person play ranking updates oregon not. And erstwhile you’re done, click “Start Tracking.”

You’ll spot immoderate cardinal accusation related to your brand’s keyword performance. To spot PPC information only, click the fastener successful the top-right country and prime “Google Ads” oregon “Bing Ads.”

To spot your mean position, navigate to the “Overview” tab, take your desired timeframe, and click “Avg. Position.”

To spot your mean presumption for circumstantial keywords, scroll down to the “Rankings Overview” section.

Set up customized alerts to beryllium notified of important changes.

To acceptable up an alert, click the doorbell icon successful the upper-right country of the page. Then, prime your alert triggers. Like erstwhile a keyword enters the apical 10, oregon gains oregon loses by much than 10 places. When you’re done, deed “Add my archetypal trigger.”

Advertising Research

Semrush’s Advertising Research is simply a PPC tracker that provides penetration into the show and strategy of immoderate brand. Like your competitors. 

To get started, participate the company’s domain and take the location. Then deed “Search.”

The default “Positions” tab shows you however galore paid keywords bring users to the site, estimated monthly traffic, and the estimated monthly costs. 

Scroll down to the “Paid Search Trends” conception to spot however traffic, keywords, and costs person trended implicit time. You tin take a clip play of 1 month, six months, 1 year, 2 years, oregon each clip successful the precocious right. 

Scroll down to presumption the “Paid Search Positions” section. This is simply a database of keywords the marque is bidding on. 

For example, announcement that Starbucks is targeting presumption similar “coffee shop” and “starbucks acquisition card”:

To region branded keywords (that see the company’s name), scroll backmost up and click “Advanced filters.” Then prime “Exclude,” “Keyword type,” and “Branded.” Then deed “Apply.”

You’ll spot a database of the unbranded keywords a rival is bidding on. Like “coffee store adjacent me”:

For each keyword, you tin spot the position, the estimated tracking, and the estimated costs. 

Go 1 measurement further and instrumentality a look astatine their existent ads. Just unfastened the “Ads Copies” tab.

These insights tin assistance you recognize which keywords a rival is going after. And what ads the marque is running.

Google Ads Conversion Tracking

The Google Ads level is 1 of the main PPC tools. It gives you galore insights into however your campaigns crossed Google’s properties are performing. 

This includes ads on:

• Google Search
• Google Shopping
• YouTube
• The Google Display Network (GDN) 

One of the astir important things to support an oculus connected is the fig of conversions. And conversion-related metrics similar conversion complaint and CPC.

To spot conversion data, unfastened Google Ads and spell to the “Campaigns” tab nether “Campaigns.” 

Click “Columns” and past “Conversions” to show conversion data. 

To spot conversion information astatine the advertisement radical level, conscionable click the “Ad groups” tab nether “Campaigns”:

To spot however galore conversions idiosyncratic ads person generated, click the “Ads” tab nether “Campaigns.”

In the “Search keywords” tab nether “Audiences, keywords, and content”, spot however idiosyncratic keywords are performing. 

The “Search terms” tab nether “Insights and reports” shows you which searches triggered your ads. If you spot your ads showing for irrelevant terms, you tin adhd those presumption to your antagonistic keyword list. To larn however to bash that, cheque retired our negative keywords guide.

Google Analytics PPC Tracking

With Google Analytics, you summation further accusation astir your PPC campaigns crossed Google, Microsoft, and societal media. And you tin comparison PPC with different channels similar email and integrated (unpaid) search.

To spot however antithetic channels lend to your postulation and conversions, unfastened the “Traffic Acquisition” tab nether “Acquisition.” You’ll spot Google Ads (and Bing Ads, if you’re moving them) nether “Paid Search.”

This tin assistance you fig retired however your PPC campaigns and different selling activities are performing. Compare the postulation and conversions each transmission generates.

Want to larn adjacent much astir the ways your PPC assemblage is engaging with your site? You’ll request to make a comparison. By default, Google shows you information for each channels together. Creating a examination enables you to presumption information for PPC specifically.

To bash that, click “Add examination +” astatine the apical of the page. A “Build comparison” model volition popular up. 

Under “Dimension” prime “First idiosyncratic manual root / medium.” 

Then prime the “Match Type,” “contains,” and successful the “Value” field, benignant successful “CPC”. 

And click “Apply.”

Once you’ve created your comparison, navigate to the “Engagement” tab connected the near and click “Overview.” 

Here, you spot much details astir however users interact with your site. Like however overmuch clip they walk connected your site. And however often they return. 

You’ll spot the mean engagement clip successful minutes. This tells you however agelong a idiosyncratic stays connected your site, connected average. The bluish enactment represents each postulation sources. And the orangish enactment is your PPC traffic. 

Scroll down to spot much insights. Like the apical pages users sojourn and idiosyncratic enactment implicit time. 

If you are moving an ecommerce store, you tin usage Google Analytics to excavation deeper into what radical bought. Just prime “Ecommerce purchases” from the paper connected the near nether “Monetization.”

To larn much astir the idiosyncratic travel and however customers determination done your marketing funnel, unfastened the “Purchase journey” tab nether “Monetization.” 

Here, you’ll spot the percent of customers that started a session, viewed a product, added a merchandise to their cart, began checkout, and made a purchase. You besides spot what instrumentality they were utilizing astatine the time.

Open the “Retention” tab to spot the ratio of returning to caller users, immoderate idiosyncratic retention statistics, and beingness worth (LTV). For each caller user, Google Analytics calculates the sum of acquisition events during the user's archetypal 120 days. LTV is the mean of this metric for each users.

In the “Tech overview” tab nether “Tech,” you spot much accusation astir the benignant of browser and instrumentality your customers are using. Click “Tech details” nether “Tech” for a much elaborate overview of the cardinal metrics. Like engagement complaint and conversions. 

This helps you recognize however users connected antithetic devices and browsers perform. Use this accusation to tailor your aboriginal campaigns. 

For instance, if mobile users person higher, you could bid higher for mobile users. Or if users connected a peculiar browser aren’t converting, you mightiness privation to cheque your tract is functioning correctly. 

Google Tag Manager 

To spot tract and conversion information successful Google Ads and Google Analytics, you’ll request to acceptable up conversion tracking. This involves installing a tracking pixel connected your website. 

It’s fundamentally a fewer lines of JavaScript codification that enables Google Ads and Google Analytics to spot what users bash connected your site. And populate that information successful your reports.

The astir businesslike mode to bash this is with Google Tag Manager (GTM). 

To instrumentality the pixel, unfastened Google Tag Manager and make an relationship (if you don’t already person one). 

Then unfastened “Admin” and click “Install Google Tag Manager.”

You’ll spot a fewer lines of code. It looks similar this:

You’ll request to adhd this codification to your site. This process volition beryllium connected your content absorption system (CMS). 

You tin bash it manually by pasting the Google tag snippet into the customized HTML tract of your CMS connected each leafage of your site. Like this:

Or instal it without straight changing your code. For instance, if you negociate your contented with WordPress, you could usage a plugin similar Site Kit by Google.

You’d person to unfastened "Plugins'' and hunt for "Site Kit by Google."

The plugin is escaped for the WordPress Creator plan. Click "Install and activate."

When the installation is complete, you'll beryllium prompted to negociate your caller plugin.

And past to acceptable it up.

You tin find the plugin successful the caller "Site Kit" menu. Choose to link Google Analytics and click "Sign successful with Google."

Allow Site Kit to presumption your Google Tag Manager and take "Continue."

Now implicit the setup.

Visit the Site Kit paper dashboard to spot cardinal metrics.

This is conscionable an example. If you are utilizing a antithetic CMS, this measurement volition beryllium different. But the remainder of the process is the same. 

Once you’ve added the pixel to your site, you’ll request to reopen Google Tag Manager and travel these steps: 

1. Create a caller tag for Google Ads. In your Google Tag Manager dashboard, click connected "Tags" and past "New" to make a caller tag. Choose "Google Ads Conversion Tracking" arsenic the tag type.
2. Configure the tag. Enter the conversion ID and conversion statement from your Google Ads account. These tin beryllium recovered successful your Google Ads relationship nether "Tools & Settings" and past "Conversions."
3. Set up triggering. Choose a trigger that defines erstwhile the tag should fire. For conversion tracking, this is typically acceptable to "Page View" for convey you oregon confirmation pages that look aft a conversion action.
4. Save and publish. Name your tag, prevention it, and past people the changes successful Google Tag Manager

To acceptable up Google Analytics successful Google Tag Manager, you’ll travel akin steps:

1. Create a caller tag for Google Analytics: In Google Tag Manager, make a caller tag and prime "Google Analytics: Universal Analytics" arsenic the tag type
2. Configure the tag:Select "New Variable" for the Google Analytics Settings and input your Google Analytics Tracking ID. Find it successful your Google Analytics relationship nether "Admin" and past "Property Settings."
3. Choose a trigger:To way leafage views, acceptable the trigger to "All Pages." You tin besides acceptable up further triggers for circumstantial events oregon actions you privation to track.
4. Save and publish:Name your tag, prevention it, and past people the changes successful Google Tag Manager

That’s it! 

With conversion tracking acceptable up, you’ll spot conversion information successful Google Analytics and Google Ads. This tin assistance you determine which campaigns to scale. And which to intermission oregon optimize. Otherwise, you won’t cognize which campaigns are driving results. 

Microsoft Advertising Conversion Tracking

Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) offers a invaluable accidental to widen your scope beyond Google. If you advertise with Microsoft, you’ll privation to way your ads. 

Like Google, Microsoft offers conversion tracking truthful you tin measurement however your ads thrust sales.

Follow these steps to configure conversion tracking with Microsoft Advertising:

1. Set Up a Universal Event Tracking (UET) Tag:

Log successful to your Microsoft Ads account. If you don’t person one, you'll request to make 1 first.

Open the "Tools" conception of the menu. And prime "Conversions" from the “Advertising, targeting, and tracking” options.

Hit the "+ Create" fastener to get started.

Now, springiness your UET tag a name. 

You mightiness besides privation to adhd a statement to assistance retrieve its intent oregon nexus it to your site's name. You tin ever alteration the tag’s sanction oregon statement aboriginal if needed. 

Press "Save and next" erstwhile you’re done.

At this point, you’ll spot a fewer antithetic options: Add the codification to your website, nonstop the tag to a developer, oregon cheque Microsoft’s instructions for adding the tag to your contented absorption platform. 

Or usage Google Tag Manager. This is astir apt the fastest and easiest enactment if you are utilizing Google Tag Manager already.

To adhd the tag to your tract manually, prime the enactment "Install the tag yourself." And click “Next.”

Then, transcript and paste your codification into the caput oregon assemblage sections of each webpage.

Alternatively, acceptable up “Microsoft Advertising Universal Event Tracking” via Google Tag Manager. 

To bash this, prime “Automatically adhd the tracking tag done Google Tag Manager” and deed “Next.” You’ll beryllium prompted to motion into Google. From there, travel the steps. 

After you’ve placed the UET tag connected your site, Microsoft volition commencement collecting information wrong astir 24 hours.

2. Define Your Conversion Goals

Once you’ve acceptable up your UET tag, the adjacent measurement is to specify a conversion goal. This is usually a purchase. Or different meaningful action, similar signing up for a newsletter. 

To bash this, click “Create a conversion goal” connected your UET confirmation page:

This opens the “Conversion goals” screen. From here, click “+ Create.”

You’ll request to determine what benignant of conversion you privation to track. 

You’ll astir apt privation to prime “Website.” Unless you’re measuring app downloads oregon offline conversions (like a telephone telephone oregon store visit). 

When you’re done, deed “Next.”

You’ll beryllium prompted to prime a extremity from the “Goal Category” drop-down menu. Like “Purchase” oregon “Submit pb form.” Pick one. 

Then determination connected to the “Goal type.” 

The simplest enactment present is to take “Destination URL.” And participate the URL of the leafage the idiosyncratic arrives astatine aft they implicit the desired action. Such arsenic a convey you oregon confirmation page.

When you’re done, click “Next.”

 If you privation to, assigning a monetary worth to the conversion is an enactment here. When you’re done, click “Next.” 

On the adjacent screen, take whether to activate “Enhanced conversions” oregon not. This is expected to marque conversion tracking much close by matching users with different data, similar email addresses. 

Make your determination by clicking the respective option. Then click “Save and next.”

Next, prime your UET tag from the drop-down list. Then click “Save and next.”

Confirm you’ve already installed the UET tag by selecting the “Yes, the UET tag was already installed…” enactment from the menu.

You’ll find instructions for installing the lawsuit tag.

Once everything is acceptable up correctly, you'll commencement seeing conversions successful a fewer hours. 

3. Check Conversions successful Microsoft Ads

You’ll find conversion information successful assorted reports disposable successful Microsoft Ads. A bully spot to commencement is the “Campaigns” report. 

Check the “Conv.” column, which represents your tracked conversions.

If there’s information flowing successful this report, your conversions are tracking properly.

Dive Deeper into PPC Tracking

PPC tracking is indispensable for optimizing your pay-per-click campaigns. It shows you what's moving and what isn't. So you tin marque tweaks erstwhile needed. And usage your fund much effectively. 

Semrush's Position Tracking enables you to show your run show and get insights beyond what you’ll find successful Google Ads. With Semrush, you can:

• Measure your ads' visibility 
• Track your positions for cardinal hunt terms
• Gain insights into your competition's strategies
• Make informed adjustments to your campaigns

Get started with Position Tracking contiguous to elevate your PPC tracking efforts.