Merge has met with customers who spend thousands of dollars per month on Google Adwords. I’m always surprised-though I should be used to it by now, their response to this question: Are you tracking your results?

The answer is invariably no. There are two really simple things you can do to optimize your Google Adwords:

1. Track conversions. Google provides you conversion tracking code so you know can know if the traffic Google is sending you is actually buying your product/service (or signing up for a newsletter or whatever your goal may be). If you have 100 visitors per month that you pay $2 per click (a total of $200) and your conversion rate is 2.5%, you just paid $80 per sale. Based on your product, is that worth it?

You have a couple of options if it’s not worth it. Option A) Turn of your Adword account. Option B) Tweak your web site to increase conversion Option C) Review your keywords and edit them so you are getting better qualified traffic. Option X) It could go on and on.

The key is that you can know exactly what Google Adwords is providing AND you can do something about making it more cost-effective.

2. Test your Ads. Did you know you can have an unlimited amount of Ads that get rotated on an even basis? What does this provide? You can see what Ad is performing the best. Merge right now is running 4 different Ads. Here are the click through rates for those ads for the last 60 days: 1.56%, 1.21%, .66% and .55%. My best ad is almost 300% more effective than my lowest performing ad. Guess what I just did? I just turned off the .66% and .55% ad, and then I created two more ads to continually fine tune my campaign. Play with the title, like “Greenville Web Design” vs. “Greenville Web Development.” You may find one performs significantly better than the other, even though the difference to you may be nominal.

Would you like to be 300% more effective with your Google Adwords account? Invest a little time in your Pay-per-click services, and I think you’ll be pleased with the results.