Walk through for Google's Ad Tracking Code

For AdWords' Conversion Tracking to work, you just need two things accepted and running ads, and the tracking code inserted in your landing page. Let's see how this is done.

Log in to your Google AdWords account under the 'Campaign Management' tab (the default screen that you land on after logging in), there is a link for 'Conversion Tracking'.

Click on the link and you will be taken to the Conversion Tracking page.

Several important things to note here:

• The conversion tracking is free

• You can track both Google AdWords campaigns and non-AdWords campaigns such as Overture (conversion tracking for non-AdWords campaigns is known as cross channel tracking for more information on this visit https://adwords.google.com/select/crosschannel.html

• You can use the Flash presentation and the PDF guide to understand more about how Conversion Tracking works and get specific code instructions on setting up tracking on your website.

To start, click on the button at the bottom of the screen titled "Start Tracking Conversions" (Shown in screenshot above). This will take you to the following page:

You have several options here, depending on what the 'key action' is for your site. If you are directing traffic to a product site that offers both a newsletter and products for sale, then you would set up conversion tracking for each of those pages one for the newsletter page and another for the product.

They give several suggestions as to where to place the conversion code.

For this example, we will select purchase/sale, as that's the most common option, and really the only option I ever use. Pick whatever suits your business best and click on 'Continue'.

Google asks you to place a small box saying "Google Site Stats send feedback " on the landing page where you insert the conversion tracking code. This page asks you to set the background color for this box match it with the background color of the page where you are putting your conversion code.

Once you are set to go, click on 'Continue'.

It's important that you read these points. Basically the page says that you should make backups of the pages you are changing and that if you are not skilled in doing this, you should get your webmaster to help you out. Google does not take any responsibility if you delete something by mistake and your website stops working (and come to think of it, I'm not responsible for that either, so make sure you know what you are doing or get someone who knows.

It's really no that difficult, but just to be safe, make sure you get someone that knows how to insert tracking code into your webpage.)

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen Don't worry, we're almost done now. Choose the language your site is in usually this will be the default language of your account.

Choose security level leave it set to http in most cases unless you are using SSL security on your site. If you don't know what that means, just look at your website's URL if it starts with 'http', use that, if it starts with 'https', use that instead.

Now here's why this is so important AdWords allows you to set a value to what each 'conversion' means to you and then uses that to calculate what it is costing you to make a sale.

All the hard work is taken out of it for you all you need to do now is to keep an eye on the cost/conversion figure (I'll tell you where to check it from) and you will know within a split second if you are profiting from your AdWords campaigns or not.

If making a sale gives you a net profit of $47 (subtracting credit card processing fees), then put in 47. Whatever the amount, enter it in the textbox and press refresh (you must press refresh for the code to reload and be configured properly.

Once the page has refreshed, click once on the text box containing the code that will select all the text right-click, select copy and then paste that into a text file. Save that file in a place you can easily access, and then click on 'Continue' (I'll cover code-installation instructions in just a minute). Onto the next screen:

You will see that the page talks about two new columns on the campaign summary, Conversion Rate and Cost/Conversion. You can spot them here in the "Campaign Summary" page the same page AdWords loads when you login to your Google AdWords account.

Below I've included a screenshot of my Adwords account. You can see how I'm using this tracking feature. It's very important, as it shows me exactly which keywords are converting to sales, and which ones aren't.

Over time, you can just remove the keywords that aren't making you money, and keep the ones that are... You'll notice there are two campaigns and the cost per conversion is $24 for 1 and $62 for the other. The products I'm selling here are selling for much more than what it costs to generate a sale, and that's the goal.

Now all that remains is that you test this system to make sure that it works. How do you do that?

AdWords suggests:

Click on one of your own ads that directs you to the landing page Wait for someone to make a purchase

Note: Typically, the data inside your AdWords account takes a few hours to update (it's almost real-time, but not quite).

But before you choose to test the system, you have to insert the tracking code into your conversion page, right?

How do you do that?

Well, if it is a basic html page (it is a page like ), here's all you need to do: Below I've included a screenshot of my Adwords account. How do you do that? page_name.html Make a backup copy Open your "Thank You Page" in a text editor or in your web page editor of choice

Note: The page you'll be adding this tracking code to, is the page visitors are taken to AFTER they purchase your product. I call this a "Thank You Page".

• Scroll down to the end of the document

• Locate the </body> tag it is at the end of the of document, like this:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>

"All of the content on your web page..."

</body>
</html>

----------------------------------

Right above the line, copy paste the AdWords conversion tracking code. So now it will look something like this:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>

"All of the content on your web page..."

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Code

</body>
</html>

----------------------------------

Save this file, and upload it to your website. Now that your tracking code has been added to you "Thank You Page" and uploaded... all you need to do is:

1. Click the link in your ad

2. Go directly to your "Thank You Page" URL

If you set up you tracking code correctly, Google will register a sale within your account. Adwords stats are not "real-time", so you may have to wait a couple hours before your stats will appear. This is completely normal.

... and that's all there is to it!