Reports and analysis are essential parts of constructing meaningful internet advertising campaigns. Without analysis, it's not possible to tell what methods are providing the best return on investment and which should be cut. Google recently added another tool for analysis in AdWords called the Paid & Organic Report. Previously, the owner could look at individual reports without having a good side-by-side comparison of the two. This new report lets the user of the account view both sets of statistics for keywords side-by-side. Why is that great news? Well, our AdWords keyword analysis just got much easier.
Using The Paid & Organic Report To Enhance Exposure
As the saying goes, "knowledge is power". This additional information presented in an at a glance format let's users hone their strategy in a number of ways.
- Identification of unexpected organic keywords can show you were to more effectively spend your money. You can easily see if a keyword is getting strong organic traffic and roll said keyword into your Google AdWords paid campaign.
- Analysis in changes within various advertising paths is much easier. Testing different strategies and keywords is common marketing strategy to see what speaks to your target audience best. Of course, once you have all that data you then have to make sense of it. The different Paid & Organic Reports for the keywords can be compared to see what produces the best results instead of wading through four or five reports to tally information.
- The inclusion of the Paid & Organic Report makes it easier to identify under-performing keywords and strike them from your strategy. Consistent monitoring is important for PPC campaign success. What's relevant right now may not mean as much three months from now. You can track these fluctuations and decide if it is still worth putting money into a keyword or if it would be better suited to a keyword with a much higher organic conversion rate.
Considerations and Potential Pitfalls
As with anything that brings positives, there is always the potential for downsides or negatives.
- The Paid & Organic Report doesn't provide a substantial look into your SEO benefit from Google AdWords. Though it can provide insight into the effects of PPC and organic searches; it can be hard to quantify the benefit to SEO. SEO benefit can be loosely estimated by looking at how many organic searches of the keywords brought people in but that's about it.
- The history of the report only goes back 90 days. The user will still need to find ways to collect and analyze data over longer periods of time if they have an extended campaign. The information will still be there in other reports but not as easily accessible.
- It is just another report. Even though it is a useful report, it's still one more set of data to analyze along with whatever else. That means you have to take the time to see if it's relevant or useful to your strategy and how to best implement the information.
- At the time of this writing, the report does not provide information on keywords from before you link up your Webmaster Tools with your Google AdWords account. It's definitely a good idea to get them linked up sooner rather than later if you intend to use this report.
Using Paid And Organic Traffic To Maximum Potential
The obvious question is- why bother linking paid and organic information in one report to begin with? The two types of traffic complement one another to foster an increased scope. Google reports that an agency example provided to them showed that branded keywords that have paid promotion through AdWords and organic presentation experienced upwards of an 18% more traffic (in previous reports Google has advised this figure is as high as 89%) than those that use just one. An organic presence will always be out there working for you through your on- and off-site SEO. It would be very easy to rotate funds between the highest traffic keywords to gradually continue to build your presence in each. A more focused approach could be to put funds into the most relevant keyword to your business and website. The right solution will depend on the size and scope of your business as well. E.g. A small computer repair store serving a local area would get more benefit out of focusing on keywords very specific to that area and their service. An e-commerce website that provides a wide variety of items would use an entirely different approach likely aimed at promoting their largest product offerings primarily.
In Conclusion...
There are many great ways to reach your target audience on the internet. An approach that lets you get your fingers in a larger pie is likely to bring more long-term success much faster. Google handles about 70% of the world's searches; so it's certainly not a bad idea to look into a Google AdWords PPC campaign to supplement your organic results.
