You are likely already aware at this point how useful PPC (pay per click) can be as a marketing tool. In fact, it’s been suggested that it’s one of the top three generators of conversions that you can use.
However, if you’re new to pay per click, or you’ve never used it before, you will need to know many things about how tracking performance works and how this can help to scale the overall performance.
So, if you want to know more about tracking PPC performance, read our complete guide below for more!
What You Need To Know First
Before you get started, there’s plenty of things you need to know in order to scale your PPC campaign (see also ‘How Do You Track PPC Performance – A Complete Guide‘). Along with asking yourself whether scaling up is the best route for you, you will need to bear the following things in mind.
[1] The Website’s Design
As the saying goes, first impressions are everything. What statistics have recently suggested is that it takes milliseconds for a user to decide whether or not they are going to use the website, simply based on its design and structure.
One of the biggest problems and overall failures of a PPC campaign is if the landing page and other web page designs are poorly created and structured. Of course, this is why this is the first point here.
You might have put a lot of time, effort and a lot of money to your PPC campaign, but you might find that all of this has gone to waste, simply because the website’s design is poor and users simply leave the site.
Of course, one of the most important things that you need to remember is that a PPC campaign is simply one facet to the overall process – so having a website that properly functions will be more important than tracking its overall performance.
To find out if your website is working properly or not, you should do the following:
- Website audits
- Check mobile responsiveness
- Optimize web speed and social media profiles
[2] Set Up Google Analytics
If you’re going to track performance, you’ll want to check conversion rates. However, some people need to recognize the importance of this and configure it accordingly. By using Google Analytics, you can easily discover keywords to use for your ads.
On top of this of course, you can check very important things like user bounce rates and the dwell time.
[3] CRM Platform Investment
This is important, but more so if you are involved with business to business clientele. Prior to tracking your PPC performance, you need to be best set up and suited towards receiving new customers.
What You Need To Track
Now it’s important to note what you need to track in terms of PPC metrics (see also ‘What Are The 5 Most Important KPIs For PPC Management?‘). Below you will see what you need to know.
[1] Impressions
Impressions are the metric that show you how many times your ad has been displayed in a search. However, while this metric is very useful to know and track – the much better metric is impressions share.
This is the figure from your total impressions divided by the eligible impressions you were given. Tracking this metric can help you to assess your competition for certain keywords for a campaign.

[2] CTR (Click Through Rate)
Click through rate is a very useful metric to track, and this will tell you how many people have viewed your ad and then clicked onto it – and you find this metric (either directly) or by dividing total number of clicks by your number of impressions.
[3] Conversion Rate
We’ve briefly talked about this in the previous section, but this is probably one of the most important metrics that you must track to assess how successful your PPC campaign is going (see also ‘What Are The 7 Key Performance Indicators Used In PPC You Should Be Tracking?‘).
The figure corresponds to how many users are not only viewing and clicking on your ad, but also going through the entire way – which is normally in order to buy a product or hire a service.
In order to find this metric, you will need to divine your number of conversions by the number of clicks you have had. Once you’ve viewed these figures though, you might be asking yourself what it all means.
Generally speaking, if you have a low conversion rate – you will need to optimize and improve your landing page, as it is likely failing to fulfill user search intent. To put this more simply, a user has clicked your ad but has not been presented with what they expected.
[4] CPC (Cost Per Click)
This is a metric that tells you how much you have already spent on your PPC campaign (see also ‘How To Use Google Analytics To Improve PPC Strategy‘). Normally these metrics will be clear depending on what service you are using, but if you are finding this measurement yourself, you can simply do the following.
Find your total number of clicks and then divide that number by the overall cost of the campaign. It’s quite simple but you will also need to take this figure loosely.
[5] CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
This is sometimes known as cost per conversion and it is a metric that refers to how much money you have spent to receive one conversion. Of course, when you work out this figure, you will be looking at an average.
If you have a high CPA figure, you are not doing well. You will need to look at some avenues for how you can reduce this figure to get better results and save much more money!
Final Thoughts
Tracking your PPC performance is very important but of course, it’s not always an easy thing to do. However, once you get to grips with the most important metrics you need to track and how you can do this, you will be in much better shape going forward.
We hope this guide has been useful for you!