How To Use Google Ad Words To View Paid Ads & Organic Search Results

There are millions of pages for your potential customers to choose from, what makes them show up on your web site or blog page?  Research tells us that the three main sources of web site traffic are …..

1. As a result from a search in a search engine
2. A link from another web site, including social media
3. A friend or associate gave them you link or business name

Because the internet is constantly changing, what worked yesterday may not work today, with the exception of SEO (search engine optimization).  Quality SEO means you are producing organic search results in the search engines. And, you always want to be on the first page of search results, studies show most people don’t go past that page before clicking a link.

Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements. In contrast, non-organic search results may include pay per click advertising from services like Google Ad Words or Bing Ad Words.

Now there is a way to compare your paid Ad Word campaigns with your organic search display listings - and it’s easily accomplished with a free tool.

Many businesses like to use paid ads to boost their appearance in search engines. Google Ad Words has a neat trick you can use for your web site(s) that allows you to view and compare the number clicks from paid ads against clicks from organic search results.

With this combined reporting of paid ads and organic listings you receive an entire view of your online marketing that includes discovering potential new key words and identifying new strategies in terms of who is viewing your content and what is being liked or not clicked.

Here are the steps to accomplish this powerful and comprehensive research on your business marketing.

In order to use the paid & organic report, you’ll need to have a Search Console (aka google Web Masters) account for your website, Once you have that, then you can link it with your AdWords account. While Search Console is a free Google tool, it provides quality data and tips to assist you with improving your visitor traffic from Google searches.  Once you link your accounts, you’ll be able to view your organic search results alongside performance statistics for text ads in your Ad Words campaigns.

Link you Search Console & Ad Words Accounts

• Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com
• Click the gear menu in top right hand corner of screen and choose Account Settings
• On new screen that displays click Linked Accounts in left hand side of page
• On right hand side of page is a section title Search Console, click"View details
• In the text box, type the URL for the website you want to link, which may require a verification process by editing meta tag or uploading a file
• Once that is done, when your verification is a success, you will see a Verified status appear

Be sure to verify (link) both versions of your site: www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com.

Index Your Site

Also, make sure you index both versions of your site: www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com.

It goes without saying, so let me cover it to make sure you have it completed. Be sure to index your site at Google Web Master Tools,  https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools which is also referred to as the Search Console we discussed above.

Choose Sitemap in the left hand column to submit your sitemap. Click submit new sitemap on top right page, be sure to type in the name of your sitemap.

Next, Choose Fetch and make one section from the drop down box (see image below). When prompted, be sure to click the Submit To Index buttons.

Do this process four times, making one section each time. Each time you do this Fetch calls the google spiders over to read your site and store that data in the Google mother lode of data.

This is a short Glossary to understand the terms that appear in the Ad Words reporting:

Ad Clicks     

The number of times someone clicked your text ad when it showed for a particular query.

Ad Impressions     

How many times your text ad has appeared on a search results page or website on the Google Network.

Ad CTR     

How often people who see your text ad end up clicking it. CTR can be used to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.

Ad Avg. CPC     

The average amount you pay each time someone clicks your text ad. Average CPC is determined by totalling the cost of all clicks and dividing it by the number of clicks.

Ad Avg Position    
Helps explain where your text ads rank, on average, on the search results page.

Organic    

Organic Clicks     
The number of times someone clicked your site's listing in the unpaid results for a particular query.

Organic Queries     

A web search. This column indicates the total number of searches that returned pages from your site over the given period.

Organic Clicks/Query     

The number of clicks you’ve received on your organic search listings divided by the total number searches that returned pages from your site.

Organic Listings/query     

A listing is when a page of your site is returned as a search result. This column indicates the average number of times a page from your site was listed per query.

Organic Avg Position    
Average position is calculated by taking the average top position of your listing (or multiple listings) for each query.

Combined ads and organic
   
Ads and Organic Clicks
This column represents the number of times a person clicked either:
- one of your text ads
- one of your organic search listings

Ads and Organic Queries     

A query is a web search. This column indicates the total number of searches that returned pages from your site in the organic search results or triggered one of your text ads.

Ads and Organic Clicks/Query     

The number of clicks you’ve received on your text ads or organic listings divided by the total number queries that either:

- returned a page from your site
- triggered one of your text ads

There are three important elements to keep in mind on the paid ads versus the organic search listings:

1. What ever level of money you put into paid ads has no bearing on organic search listings. The two are not linked in any way. Don’t think if you buy more ads that somehow your organic listings will have a better chance of being increased.

2. Organic search results have no limitations in terms of geographic locations or language. However, your paid ad campaign is constrained by the settings you choose in your specific campaign(s).  As a result, the organic impressions may be significantly higher than paid impressions because organic results have a wider audience.

3. Your organic data is collected starting from the time you import it by linking it with your Ad Words account using the process described earlier.

Hopefully this article will help you get a better handle on your online marketing. Ad Words has been a powerful marketing tool for researching key terms and phrases. Now, combining it with your organic search results. it becomes even more comprehensive in measuring traffic statistics and drilling down to fine tune your online marketing.

Steu Mann has over 15 years of consulting with business owners and educators to learn more effective ways to use web technology. He can be reached at (541) 200-5269.