1. Not Tracking Conversions
2. Not Linking Your AdWords & Analytics Account
3. Not Opting Out of the Content Network
4. Not Using Relevant Ad Groups
5. Not Split-Testing & Improving Your Ads
6. Not Using Negative Keywords
7. Not Using Different Keyword Matching Options

1. Not Tracking Conversions

No AdWords campaign should be running without conversion tracking activated and the conversion script properly inserted into X-Cart. For detailed instructions see: How To Install AdWords Conversion Code in X-Cart.

2. Not Linking Your AdWords & Analytics Account

Using your AdWords dashboard to evaluate your account performance limits you to half of the reporting power you need. Google allows you to tightly integrating these two services by Linking Your AdWords & Analytics accounts.

This provides greater reporting information such as your Revenue generate, Cost and Return on Investment with AdWords – just to name a few. This is an excellent way to make sure your account is contributing positively to your bottom line.

You get much more insightful data from linking your accounts.

3. Not Opting Out of the Content Network

By default all campaigns are set-up with automatic enrollment into the Content Network. Because the Search and Content Network are two entirely different advertising methods is a standard best practice to keep their campaigns separated. This will help you in split-testing your ads, mentioned later.

To make sure you are opted out of the Content Network under ‘Campaign Settings’ make sure ‘The content network’ is NOT checked.

Make sure the content box is not checked

4. Not Using Relevant Ad Groups

Your Campaigns and Ad Groups need to be relevant if you want to avoid the inevitable ‘Google Tax’ of poorly organized campaigns. The simplest way I can recommend setting them up is to model your X-Cart stores category structure.

Think Category -> Subcategory -> Product = Campaign -> Ad Group -> Keywords.

As for how many keywords in an Ad Group, a good range is 1 – 30 relevant keywords. Obviously every situation is different and your mileage may vary.

5. Not Split-Testing & Improving Your Ads

Every Ad Group you set-up should always have two ads running against each other. Once you have a statistically signification winner you delete the loser and try to write a better ad. You would be surprised how little changes such as one word or display URL can make.

Correctly split testing your ads requires two steps
a. Make sure your ads settings are ‘Rotate: Show ads more evenly’ under the campaign settings.

b. Make sure are using a tool to confirm that the differences between the two ads are significant.

You can check manually for free using www.SplitTester.com and entering in the two ads CTRs and number of clicks.

If you prefer to save time you can use Winner Alert. I use Winner Alert because it e-mails me anytime I have a ‘winning ad’ so I can hop right in and throw up a new contender. While their webpage won’t win any design awards they have been around a long time and their tool works.

6. Not Using Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are keywords that will stop your ads from showing. They are a very important factor in AdWords and this is probably the most overlooked mistake.

How does it work exactly? Let’s say I am bidding on the broad keyword: custom wood cabinets because the client sells custom cabinetry. Using one of the two methods below I notice I have received a click from the search query : “custom wood cabinet instructions”.

Since the client does not offer or sell any instructions that would be flagged as a term for the negative keywords and I would add it to the negative keyword list (either at the Campaign level or Ad Group level). Yes this takes time, but there are tools to speed things up.

How do you find out exactly what the visitor typed in? Well there are two methods you can either use Search Query Reports or you can use your Google Analytics data (if you set it up to record this information). The Complete Analytics Package for X-Cart does include this function and a special spreadsheet tool to speed up the process (Yes that is a shameless plug!).

7. Not Using Different Keyword Matching Options

AdWords offers several keyword matching options: broad, phrase and exact.

They work as follows:

Broad matches any combination of the keyword(s) and can match even if the keyword(s) aren’t necessarily in the visitors search.

Phrase matches any search that contains the phrase entered in the quotes in that order. So “dell laptop” would match dell laptop but NOT laptop dell

Exact matches only exactly what is inbetween the brackets [].

Example
Broad- dell laptop would match: dell laptop, fix laptop dell, buy laptop dell online, etc
Phrase- “dell laptop” would match: dell laptop, buy dell laptop, dell laptop for sale, etc
Exact- [dell laptop] would match: dell laptop

Well there you have it – time to get to work on improving your AdWords performance!
It is best to think of your account like a sculpture. You should always be fine tuning and cutting away the excess while highlighting the better parts.

Tweet This Post

To be frank and honest – if you are not using conversion tracking you shouldn’t be using AdWords – it’s that important. It would be like watching two NFL teams in the SuperBowl with no way to see any touchdowns or know the score throughout the entire game.

This tutorial will show you how to correctly install the AdWords conversion tracking code within your X-Cart shopping cart store to record sales but ALSO capture the dollar amount of each sale.

We are going to start from scratch…

Part I. Getting the Code

1. Login to your AdWords Account and the top ‘Reporting and Tools’ tab, then click the ‘Conversions’.

2. Click the ‘+New Conversion’ button.

3. Name your conversion and select a tracking purpose from the drop down menu. I will put ‘Sale’.

4. On the drop down menu underneath ‘This action is used for tracking:’ select Purchase / Sale

5. On the conversion page security level drop down choose http or https depending on your website set-up (most of the time this will be https://)

6.In Revenue for conversion enter 1.0 (we will be changing this later don’t worry)

7. Choose the language and text format.

8. Click ‘Save & Get Code’, should look similar to this:

Part II. Configuring the Code

Copy and paste the code into the AdWords Conversion Code Template – downloadable for free (right click and choose ‘Save As’)

Next, paste your code BELOW the included code in the template.

This is the tricky part so be sure to TRIPLE check for accuracy –

Take the variables highlighted below from your code and paste them OVER the matching color code in the Squeeze Juice Marketing Template as pictured below:

Configure code for X-Cart

Note: you will paste the conversion_id and conversion label code twice (one in the first script, and then again the document.write url below).

Once you’ve triple checked the correct pasting of your variables delete the original pasted code on the bottom leaving just the Squeeze Juice Marketing Template code as pictured:

Final X-Cart code should look like this

Part III. Installation

In order for this to work you MUST have the Google Analytics Module turned on and Use E-Commerce analysis box checked in the Admin->General Settings->Google Analytics

(Be sure to backup all files before modifying)

Log into your site with your FTP client and download skin1/modules/Google_Analytics/ga_commerce_form.tpl

Paste your newly configured Adwords conversion code into the end of this file, on a new line.

Save and upload the adjusted ga_commerce_form.tpl.

That’s it! You’re set!

If you would like to verify that it is working, place a test order, then view the source code the receipt page and you should see your code towards the bottom of the page with the order subtotal information in the value field.

Enjoy!

Tweet This Post