All too often keywords in a paid search account are evaluated based solely on their ability to generate conversions: leads, bookings or sales. If a keyword has an unacceptable conversion rate or an unsatisfactory return on investment (ROI), it is paused or its bid is greatly reduced.

Sometimes, if conversion data is scarce, click-through-rate (CTR) is instead used to evaluate a keyword’s performance. If a keyword generates only 5 clicks from 1,000 impressions, it has a CTR of 0.5% so is deemed irrelevant. The keyword is then paused or relegated to the second page of search result obscurity.

This is not the right approach.

Beyond the Click

There is more to paid search management than optimising keywords based only on conversion rates and click-through-rates. A more intelligent approach also considers what happens once a user clicks on your ad:

• How many pages are they viewing?
• How long are they spending on your site?
• How many people are immediately bouncing?
• How many people are returning at a later date?

If a keyword has a poor conversion rate and a poor click through rate, but people are viewing a large number of pages, spending a long time on your site and returning regularly, the keyword may be doing a great job at creating awareness of your products or services. Even though conversion rate may be low, the keyword may not deserve to be paused or have its bid reduced – instead it may be beneficial to increase its bid to allow the keyword to flourish and user engagement to increase.

Similarly, if a keyword is converting well but 80% of people are immediately bouncing, finding out why – perhaps by looking at search queries being matched to the keyword – could help the keyword convert even better.

How to Optimise a Campaign Intelligently

Analytics software, such as Google Analytics, are incredibly useful in helping to understand what people do after they click on your ad and land on your site. If your Google Analytics account is linked to your Google AdWords account, it is possible to see page views, time on site and bounce rate for each of your AdWords campaigns, ad groups and keywords (select Traffic Sources > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns).

Once you’ve logged into Google Analytics, look at each of your campaigns:

• Which campaigns are engaging users with a high time spent on site? Why?
• Which campaigns are bringing in untargeted users who immediately bounce back and go elsewhere? Why?
• Which campaigns are persuading users to come back later? Why?

Next, drill down to ad group level and keywords level (if you have enough data) and ask yourself the same questions. 100 visits is usually significant to make reliable, informed decisions – but be careful about drawing conclusions for keywords / ad groups with less than 30 visits.

Make a note of those campaigns, ad groups and keywords which stand out, both positively and negatively. Look for common words that regularly appear in unusually high or unusually low metrics, such as ‘cheap’, ‘discount’ and ‘free’. How have they performed? Probably very different to your more generic keywords, you would imagine, but in what way?

Look for locations, product names and other qualifiers – can you notice any trends? Are there certain keywords with a high bounce rate? Could any negatives be added to reduce bounce rate?

Record any trends and resulting changes in a log. This is your insight on user engagement, and will not only help you develop a improved paid search campaign which will better connect with users, but will also help you better understand your audience and make more informed, strategic business decisions.

How to Optimise a Campaign Even More Intelligently

If you’re feeling more ambitious, export the keyword data to Excel and VLOOKUP each keyword’s Analytics performance to its AdWords performance (select Traffic Sources  > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns > “dimension” = “keywords” > export > CSV for Excel).

That way, when you’re looking at each keyword’s costs, CTR, conversions and ROI, you can also consider page views, time on site, returning visits and bounce rate, and better understand each keyword’s impact on creating awareness and interest.

Look at keyword 8 in the example below. It has a low conversion rate and a high cost per conversion, so based on conversion performance it should perhaps be paused. But notice how page views, time on site and bounce rate are all exceptionally good. Should the keyword really really be paused? It seems to be engaging users well, so why not instead find out why its conversion is so low?

Similarly, keyword 9 is converting well, but if it’s bounce rate could be reduced, it could become even more profitable. Play around with new ideas and experiment optimising bids based on different metrics.

It’s All About Engagement

The next time you optimise your campaign, remember there’s more to paid search management than conversions. If, like the majority of Americans, you’ve ever researched your next holiday, browsed that DVD player or shortlisted those birthday presents on your lunch break at work, only to buy online when you get home (on a different IP address), you will appreciate that keyword conversion data can only get you so far.

Conversion optimisation is naturally biased towards converting keywords, so will tend to ignore keywords at earlier stages of the buying cycle, which may play an essential role in creating awareness, generating interest and engaging users with your products, services and brand.

Conversion data – and automated tools which optimise keywords based on conversion data – are not the be all and end all of paid search management. Understanding user engagement could well be, and the tools to get you started are right at your fingertips.