AdWords is straightforward in its promise. You bid on a keyword, and when someone searches for it, your ad appears. All is good, and the world goes 'round. But sometimes your ad simply doesn’t show up. It’s not just confusing—it costs you profits.

 

That’s why tracking your PPC keywords is so much more important than just knowing your ad positions.

 

“OK, “you say, “how is it that I’m losing money when I don’t show up on a PPC ad? I pay only when someone clicks.” True, you haven’t dipped into your Adwords budget, but you might have missed a valuable customer who never saw your ad in the first place. You saved the $1.60 on the click, but you lost out on $30 from the sale.

 

Those blips happen, but how often? And is one keyword in your campaign more vulnerable than others?

That is why we made “coverage” a central part of Adwords Weekly Tracking. For every keyword, we include a simple graphic and score that tells you how often your ad has appeared compared to how often is should have appeared. Maybe 95% coverage is fantastic, but 60% tells you to look further into your ad settings.

We aren’t always positive “why” Google or Bing skip an ad, but we can make sure these big misses never blindside you. By tracking your PPC keywords each week, you put SpyFu on constant watch to catch where you are missing out on profitable clicks when your ad gets skipped. That alerts you to the opportunity to adjust your quality score, your max bid, or even caps on your daily budget.

 

When you set up tracking groups, you can combine your keywords into organized lists by category or a related theme. Immediately, you can start keeping tabs on a specific area for each list. 

 

Choose a product line or single out keywords that you just started targeting this last month. That way you can track their growth independent of comparisons to your power hitters that have been in development for a while. Does this segmenting sound familiar? The Recon Files Keyword Ranking Report comes out on top in its deep focus each month on your site’s performance on targeted keywords. 

 

The weekly ranking report isn’t as in-depth, but it is more controllable. Stop and go on a dime. You can start tracking the keywords immediately, so it lends itself to lists like seasonal keywords or lists of keywords grouped by the SEO who is doing the work.

 

Once you know where you stand, prioritize your attention. Build upon your uptrending growth and improve your rankings where they are likely to leap onto the first page of results. At the same time, catch what’s slipping and see how you’re progressing. 

 

Staying on top of SEO tracking lets you see how your site is ranking on its most important keyword so you can manage weekly updates at a glance.