How to Maximize Ad Performance & Boost ROI with Improved Keyword Tracking by HitTail
 by Ian Cook

How to Maximize Ad Performance & Boost ROI with Improved Keyword Tracking by HitTail
—by Esoos Bobnar | Research by Sante J. Achille

If you've ever spent any time running an AdWords campaign, you know Google's tracking stats are woefully inadequate in terms of telling you which keywords are actually converting into sales. That's because, when your keyword triggers an ad, AdWords' regular stats will only show you the keyword you're bidding on, not the keyword the user actually entered.

For instance, let's say you're bidding on the keyword hawaii vacation. You've got your matching options set to broad match to include all variations, plurals, and synonyms of this keyword. Now if someone searches for best prices on vacations in hawaii, your ad will appear because broad match is geared to include such related terms. However, if that person clicks your ad, your AdWords stats will only show a click for hawaii vacation.

As you may already know, that's a gaping hole in Google's keyword tracking! Recently, our friend and fellow SEO, Sante Achille, shared his experience with a great resource that plugs this gaping hole.

The problem is that Google is designed to only show you stats for the specific keyword you bid on—not the broad match related term that actually triggered your ad. So you will not see that you got a click for best prices on vacations in hawaii, even if that's the keyphrase that caused your ad to be displayed. This creates an obvious problem:

You might be getting lots of converting traffic for best prices on vacations in hawaii, but have no idea because your AdWords stats don't give you that information!

If yo...

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