How to Track and Increase Your Google Ads Conversion Rate: 5 Proven Tips

Getting clicks from Google Ads but not getting any sales? 

News flash: You have a conversion rate problem. 

In this post, we'll demystify Google Ads conversion rate and show you how to make the most out of ad interactions.

Let's get started.  

What You Need to Know About Google Ads Conversion Rate

In simple terms, your Google Ads conversion rate measures the percentage of ad interactions that lead to the accomplishment of a tracked goal. This can pertain to any business goal, like a completed sale, newsletter signup, software download, or consultation booking. 

To calculate the conversion rate of your Google Ads, start by dividing the number of conversions by the total ad interactions within a specific period. Then, multiply the result by 100 to arrive at a percentage value.

Let's say you closed a total of 100 sales out of 1,000 total ad clicks. 

Plugging the numbers into the formula, you'll get:

Tracking conversion rate is a great way to measure the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign, particularly when it comes to Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). It also helps unveil improvement opportunities and evaluate iterative changes to your strategy.

What is a good conversion rate for Google Ads?

Not everyone who clicks on your ad actually makes a purchase or contributes to your business objectives. It's also unrealistic to expect crazy high conversion rates, like 90%, 50%, or even 10%. 

Let's put things into perspective by looking at the average conversion rate for Google Ads by industry. 

Take note that we're including conversion rates for paid search and ads on the Google Display Network (GDN). 

Keeping up with industry benchmarks lets you establish a baseline for evaluating your current Google Ads campaign's performance. 

If your conversion rate is below the industry average, prioritize identifying problems and issues in your strategy. Or, if your conversion rate hits the mark just right, start brainstorming experiments that can push your campaign results even further. 

Either way, effective data reporting and analysis will lead the way.

How Google Ads Track Conversions

Now that you're familiar with Google Ads conversion rates, it's time to discuss the tracking process. 

Google Ads has built-in reporting tools that will give you a detailed overview of your ad campaigns. 

To access these tools, log in to your Google Ads account, go to 'Campaigns,' and click 'Insights and reports.' 

The overview report also includes conversion tracking, providing a quick look at your campaigns' conversion results. To set new conversion actions to track, go to 'Goals' and click 'New conversion action.' 

Google Ads will walk you through the creation of trackable conversion events. 

You start by selecting the source of your conversion (website, app, etc.). Google Ads will then guide you through the rest of the process, like entering your domain or selecting an external analytics tool for data tracking. 

What qualifies as a conversion activity in Google Ads? 

Here's a quick roundup of the conversion events you can track in Google Ads:

• In-app purchases
• App downloads
• Link clicks
• Page views
• Online sales
• Phone calls
• Offline conversions

How to Improve Conversion Rate in Google Ads?

Now, you're more than prepared to start tracking your Google Ads conversion rate. 

This raises the question: How can you optimize your conversion rate and get more out of your Google Ads campaign?

Here are five things to remember:

1. Refine your keyword strategy 

Your advertising keyword strategy can make or break your advertising success. 

Keywords determine who you reach with your ad content. Furthermore, they affect who you'll compete against for your target audience's attention. 

Use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner to conduct keyword research for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. 

On Ahrefs, go to 'Keywords Explorer.' From there, kickstart your research by entering a "seed keyword" (any relevant keyword) and clicking 'Search.'

The keyword overview report contains a ton of helpful SEO information about your seed keyword. This includes additional keyword ideas to diversify your target keyword pool. 

But since you're trying to optimize your Google Ads conversion rate, skip to one of the pages under "Keyword ideas" to find matching, related, and suggested keywords. 

For example, on the "Matching terms" page, you'll not only find potential Google Ads keyword ideas. The report also contains important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics to help you identify the most profitable keywords of the bunch — namely, Cost Per Click (CPC) and search volume (SV).

Feel free to click on the header columns to sort the keywords list according to these metrics. 

While Ahrefs is useful for discovering keyword ideas, Google Keyword Planner makes it easier to gauge the competitiveness of PPC keywords. 

You can fire up Google Keyword Planner by logging into your Google Ads account, selecting 'Tools,' and clicking 'Keyword Planner' under "Planning." Just be mindful that while it doesn't include the exact figures for search volume, it reveals up-to-date CPC and keyword competitiveness information. 

2. Use negative keywords to get more qualified traffic

In advertising, a "negative keyword" is excluded from your campaign targeting strategy. 

Specifying negative keywords prevents your ads from showing to people who are highly unlikely to become paying customers — saving precious advertising dollars. Hiding your ads from the wrong audience is also a surefire way to improve your Google Ads Click-Through Rate (CTR).

For example, you can set "free" as a negative keyword if you don't offer any free products or services. You can also specify the locations, competitor brand names, and product categories that your company doesn't offer. 

To set negative keywords for your Google Ads campaign, go to your campaign overview page, scroll down to "Search terms report & keyword themes," and click 'Edit.' 

Next, switch to the 'Negative keyword themes' tab and click 'Edit' to start adding negative keywords. 

3. Scout out your competitors

The online advertising space is dominated by brands that already know the ins and outs of the landscape. 

Observing their ads in action is a surefire way to pinpoint proven strategies that yield profitable results. 

To do PPC competitor analysis, you can run a Google search and check the paid results firsthand. You can also use tools like Ahrefs to access the ad history of keywords — which lets you view the top domains, landing pages, and ads that appear for your target keywords.

Remember, conversion rate is all about the effectiveness of your audience targeting and landing page optimization.

Pay attention to the following elements when conducting your competitor analysis:

• Landing page headlines — The headline is responsible for igniting the audience's interest and compelling them to see the entire page. Take inspiration from your competitor's landing pages to underline power words, voice, and other copywriting techniques that can keep visitors hooked. 
• Visual content — On a landing page, visual content such as product photos, data visualizations, and background images help direct your audience's gaze toward important page elements. They also convey information, such as instructions and statistical data, more effectively than written text.
• Call-To-Action (CTA) — How do competitors write and present CTA buttons or links? To generate more conversions, use more direct and action-oriented CTAs that highlight the benefits of your product or service.
• Value-added offers — Does your competitor offer discounts, templates, or other freebies? Chances are, a handful of their conversions are from customers who are highly interested in receiving these bonuses. 
• Overall design layout — Last but not least, look at how your competitors structure their landing pages and dissect the sections they include. For example, they might be using videos, testimonials, trust badges, and stats to build buyer confidence — see to it that your page isn't left out.

4. Utilize User-Generated Content (UGC)

UGC pertains to any piece of content created or submitted by users. 

This can be Instagram posts with your product, customer reviews, star ratings, or anything submitted by users that benefits your brand image. 

Here are some ideas that will help you fish for more UGC: 

• Create and promote your Google Business Profile. A Google Business Profile lets you appear in Google Maps and local search features. You can also share a review link with your customers and social media followers to get UGC, specifically star ratings and reviews. 
• Use social media listening tools. Social media listening tools like HootSuite and Brand24 let you comb through the socialsphere to find mentions of your brand. This will help you locate positive testimonials that you can feature on your landing page. 
• Automate review requests via email. Use tools like Mailchimp and Omnisend to automatically send review request emails whenever someone completes a purchase on your website. This allows you to passively obtain UGC while you focus on generating more sales.  
• Run social media contests. A simple hashtag contest lets you incentivize UGC submissions from social media users. In exchange, you can round up visual content that will help you create more convincing landing pages. 

5. Track your Google Ads performance 

The thing about marketing and advertising is, you don't need to get everything right the first time. 

If you track your Google Ads performance and use data in your decision-making, every outcome is a stepping stone to success. You just need a streamlined and reliable way to consolidate, visualize, and analyze your performance data. 

That's where Polymer comes in.  

Polymer is a no-nonsense Business Intelligence (BI) solution packed with features that turn mountains of data into nuggets of readable insights. Its flexible data visualization tools make it easy to track your Google Ads performance metrics, identify trends, and reveal opportunities.

So, how does Polymer work? 

To give you an overview, here's a quick rundown of Polymer's key features:

• Easy-setup data connectors. Connect and import data from data sources like Google Ads, Google Analytics, Shopify, and more.
• Custom metrics and goals. Automate the calculation of important Google Ads KPIs and set target values for each.
• Powerful visualization tools. Create heatmaps, pivot tables, bar charts, funnel graphs, and more without writing a single line of code.
• AI-powered tools to save time. Instantly generate recommended insights, get suggestions for visualization settings, or use PolyAI to analyze your data using text prompts.

Tracking Your Google Ads Conversion Rate with Polymer

Ready to take a stab at Google Ads conversion rate optimization? 

Prepare your Google Ads performance dashboard by starting a Polymer free trial today. 

Click here to start your trial.