Conversion tracking is a key tool for Google Ads. It allows you to track meaningful actions or completed visits and conversions on your company’s website or landing pages. Due to this tracking, you will be able to understand how well your ads are performing, and if your marketing strategy is working.
Even though this is a keystone to succeeding in Google Ads, it is easy to set up and continue to maintain. Google Ads conversion tracking breaks and one week you will start seeing a drop in conversion data and there are no indicators that tracking is broken. Most people will make changes to try and fix what is wrong in the account not knowing the account is fine, which can make your success in Google Ads harder. In today’s blog post we are going to go over some of the pains of conversion tracking and how to fix them.
Google Ads Conversion Tracking Proper Set-up
There are multiple types of conversion tracking, however, setting it up is done the exact same regardless of what you choose. Here’s a link from Google on how to set up conversion tracking. If you want the short version, essentially Google generates some HTML code that you need to copy and paste into your webpage on your site that customers visit after completing the conversion, for example, you could add this to a thank you page or confirmation order page.
To start you will need to be in Google Ads and click on the Tools section in the top right of the screen. From there you will select conversion under the measurements drop-down menu. This will bring up the conversions actions section, and you can click the +conversion button to create your first conversion.
Once this happens you will be asked to fill out a form that will help Google Ads generate the appropriate HTML code for you to copy and paste on your site. Make sure you give your conversion a name i.e. “Contact Us Submission” that way you can see how many times the form was filled compared to how many people visited the landing page.
After this you can choose the source of the conversion and Google will prompt you through the implementation process from there. Here are the four choices for a source of conversion: Webpage, Call on-site, App download, and Import.
Conversion Tracking Metrics
Once this is all done you have your tracking set up so you can see conversion data. So let us go over the conversion metrics that Google provides. Conversion (1 per click) counts each time you receive one or more conversions from a single ad click. This is used so you can get the number of new customers you are getting. Cost/conversion (1 per click) shows the amount of money spent on clicks divided by the total conversions. This allows you to see the ROI (return on investment). The conversion rate (1 per click) shows the percentage of clicks that turn into conversions. The percentage shows you how effective your ads, landing page, or keywords are performing. Last is the view-through conversion which measures the number of times a customer viewed but didn’t click on your ad, but then later on converted.
Why Conversion Tracking isn’t Working & How to Fix it
Okay so now that we have the basics of conversion tracking done let's go over some common pain points and how to fix them.
No Conversion Data or Seeing Low Conversion Rates
Sometimes after setting up conversion tracking you might see fewer conversions than usual or even none at all. Don’t freak out, there are two things to do.
The first thing to look at if your conversions are low is the performance of your accounts. Check your change history to see if there have been any recent changes that could have affected the performance of your accounts. The second is to try out the Google Tag Assistant plugin which we prefer to use with our clients. Google created a tool to check up on the tags on landing pages which is Called Google Tag Assistant. Google Tag Assistant can report back what your tracking is picking up. There is an assortment of colors that can show up giving you the status of the tag code so you can confirm if your conversion tracking is working properly.
Adding or Removing a Conversion
Sometimes when adding conversions in tracking, you forget to add an action you wanted to track, or you want to remove one because you consider it no longer viable. It is an easy fix. First to add one just refer to the beginning of the blog post. It is the exact same process just replicated. If you are trying to remove a conversion, you need to go to the tools section in the top right section then go to conversions and then proceed to the conversions section. After this process, you should see all the conversions you are tracking, click on the one you would like to remove. After clicking on the conversion you should see a separate information section and you can click an edit option. Finally, all you need to do is uncheck the “include in conversions” option and your set. If you can get onto the backend of your website faster, then you can just remove the specific tracking on the backend of your website as well.
No Recent Conversions or Tag Inactive in the Conversions Section
In the conversions section of Google Ads, you might see red text that says either “tag inactive” or “no recent conversions”. You might be confused especially if in your account you have seen converted recently. So what’s going on?
Surprisingly there isn’t anything you need to do here. It seems counterintuitive, especially with all the red and suspicious phrasing being used. Essentially this means you haven’t had any conversions within the last 7 days, or the 30 during the tag inactive period. So it doesn’t mean that tracking isn’t working properly, but that conversions have just been slow to come in for the action you are trying to track. You will probably have to circle back to your account performance and strategy and see if you can boost conversions through optimizations.
Conversion tracking in Google Ads is such a valuable tool to have. Make sure you are setting it up properly, and if you run into any of these pain points once tracking is set up hopefully these tips will help you out.