AdWords & Analytics Help - Defining Google Marketing Jargon

With all the analytics and adwords terms out there today, we thought it’d be nice to have a clear list of 10 related definitions. This might help you see their relationship and more effectively use both.

Analytics: The practice of measuring, managing, and analyzing marketing performance in order to optimize ROI. This can include tracking traffic to your site, conversions, paid search ads, and SEO. Of course, the most common recording and measuring tool is Google Analytics. Read more in "Google Analytics Setup & Best Practices."

CTR: “Click Through Rate” - the number of web users who click on a certain image or text button out of the total number of visitors or viewers that saw it. It helps when measuring the success of a certain advertisement or marketing campaign.

Conversion Rate: The amount of web visitors out of total visitors that take the action you want them to take when they come to your site, such as filling out your contact form or subscribing to your newsletter. Read about a case in which this improved in "AdWords Case Study: 178% Increase in Conversions."

Bounce Rate: Measures how many of the people that view a site choose to exit it after viewing only one page. This is measured in a percentage and can reflect whether the site was relevant/helpful to visitor’s search query.

Tracking Code: This is the snippet of code that connects a site/blog to Google Analytics (or other data collection tool), allowing the software to track where visitors come from and how they interact with the site. Set up your tracking code with the help of "A Quick Look at Google Analytics Customization."

Link Building: The method of getting links to your site on other websites in order to improve rankings on search engine results pages, get referral traffic and build rapport across the web. Search engine visibility tends to increase when your website has more quality backlinks from other trusted websites.

---

AdWords: An advertising service by Google designed for businesses so that they can display ads on Google’s network. Businesses can set a budget and then pay when a user clicks on their ad. The system incorporates keywords to link searchers with the most appropriate ads. Set up your account with "Setting Up an AdWords Account: Back to the Basics."

Impressions: The number of times users had the ability to see your ad or site, determined by the number of times the page with the ad on it was located and loaded. It provides an estimate for the number of people an ad is reaching.

CPM: “Cost Per Thousand Impressions” - The method of paying for an ad based on the amount of impressions your ad receives. The rate is the cost per a thousand impressions. Example = one million impressions on your ad at $10 CPM = $10,000 total in cost to your company. CPM may be preferred over CPC if you are running an awareness campaign.

CPC: “Cost Per Click” - The amount you pay for each click in a pay-per-click campaign. In this system, you don’t have to pay for your ad’s space on a page or overall impressions unless someone clicks on it. 

Want a few more resources as you get started with AdWords and Analytics? 

- Monitoring: "Essential Analytics: Standard Metrics to Watch"

- More set up: "Event Tracking & Virtual Pageviews"

- Partnerships: "Why Hire an Google Partner to Manage Your AdWords Account?"

- AdWords & Landing Pages: "What's Trust Got to Do with It?"