Lets say I'm bidding on 75 keywords, and I judge a 2% conversion to sale of visitors as a success for my campaign. Should that 1% be judged on an individual keyword basis, or on all the keywords combined? I ask because up to now I've had 4497 impressions of my 75 keywords, with a 1.11% clickthrough, making 50 clicks. If I'm measuring my success rate against all the keywords in a campaign combined, then I should have 1 sale by now (50 clicks = 1% = 1 sale). However, if I was measuring my success against each keyword individually, then I would have to wait until each keyword itself gets 50 clicks before seeing if it makes a sale to achieve my target 2% conversion (1 sale in 50 clicks). I know advertisers conversions vary between say 1% & 5%, but I've never understood if thats based on total keywords combined (in which case you can judge success much sooner), or each keyword itself (in which case the campaign has to run on much longer for them all to get enough clicks)? Of course, all keywords are quite similar in the campaign, so guess that has a bearing on the answer, for example: driving instructor training driver instructor training how to become a driving instructor Many thanks, Dave
Your conversion rate is the average you get from your total impressions. Which means that you could get no sales for the first 100 impressions and then six sales for the next. From what you are saying, you have not had the actual 2% sales yet, you are just "hoping" that's what you'll get. So you don't yet know how well your page converts. Look at your stats (I'm assuming you're tracking everything) and see how long visitors stay on your landing page. That should give you a little bit of insight. If your bounce rate is higher than 65% chances are you may have to revise your landing page. In any case 50 clicks is too early to judge. And by the way, advertisers conversions vary from 0% to various other possibilities. Keep that in mind.
@ianthekisser: I guess you mean that the conversion rate is based on the clicks - not the impressions? The conversion rate is calculated like this: Conversion rate = Sales / total clicks. Actually the sales is the "conversion trackings" - because if you use the conversion tracking to other measures than sales, it will be a part of the calculation. In Google Analytics it is calculated: Conversion rate = sales / total visits Conversion tracking is a valid measure. It uses a 30 days cookie, which means that a user can click on your add monday, and then return to the site wednesday and buy. This behaviour will credit the AdWords add click from monday even though is was not a direct buy.
How many clicks should I count before giving up on an under-performing keyword? (In terms of conversion rate) Consider the following as an approximation, type in Excel: =binomdist([number of conversions],[number of clicks],[average conversion rate],1) In the case described above [number of conversions] = 0 If the result is below 0.05 it indicates that there's less than a 5% chance for the keyword to reach the average conversion rate. Which average conversion rate should I choose (campaign level, ad group level etc.)? The narrower possible, i.e. for an ad group with, say, more than 10 conversions I would compare the keyword's conversion rate to that of the ad group level. You can compare it to the campaign level, but it wouldn't mean anything if you're selling, say, cars and bubble gums on the same campaign However: 1. If it's a keyword you're dealing with then you can start by lowering the bid. 2. Using binomdist is a rough approximation. For non-zero conversions better use calculators like this one: http://www.prconline.com/education/tools/statsignificance/index.asp