So youve implemented a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, visitors to your site have gone up, sales have started to increase and all is well. You would be forgiven to think that the job is done, so sit back and watch the money roll in. However, there is still another vital stage of running a successful PPC campaign Tracking.

Why is tracking important?
With any marketing campaign, be it online or offline there are bound to be mistakes made, some small, some not so small, the goal of tracking is to find out which parts of your campaign has been a success and more importantly, what hasnt and why. Tracking your PPC campaign will enable you not only to gain a greater understanding of your customer but it will also give you a greater understanding of your website and how your customers use it unfortunately very few visitors to your website will use it exactly how you intended no matter how well it is designed!

So what should you track?
Work out what you want to get from your PPC campaign, if you sell a product online you are likely to want more sales, if you offer a service you may well want to track the number of enquiries from your website. Whatever it is you should at the end of it be able to assess whether your campaign has met your expectations and given you a positive ROI.

Often in a PPC campaign, specific landing pages will be set up for each advert. Measuring the number of conversions from visitors who landed on these pages can be a great indicator as to what the customers wants to see when they get to your site.

Different websites are going to want to track different things, so it is important you take a step back and really work out what factors should be taken into consideration when judging whether your PPC campaign has been a success. You may well want them to make a purchase online, sign up for your weekly newsletter, or both of these. Whatever the goal is, you should make sure you track it.

How can I track my PPC conversions?
Here are 3 ways of tracking your PPC campaign success:

1. Web log files Using software such as Click Tracks which analyses your web logs and provides you with detailed information on visitors to your site both those who have come through organic listings and those from PPC.

2. Search engine conversion counters Both Google and Yahoo offer free services with their Adwords and search marketing products. Not only will these give you conversions but will also provide other important metrics such as clicks, click through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and the total cost of the campaign.

3. Pressing the off switch and then turning it back on again Not generally recommended for obvious reasons, but this is a crude way of judging what effect your campaign is having.

Tracking your PPC campaign is by no means easy and it can take a long time to work out exactly what you need to track. However once you have an efficient tracking system in place it will become a lot easier to understand your customers and provide you with valuable information as to how you can refine your campaign to maximise ROI.

Paul Barrett is an account manager at search engine marketing specialists, SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility helps its clients attract, convert and retain profitable customers through their websites.

For more information, visit Site Visibility