As advertisers, you know it's basic to find your real target market.

For example, it's not just young men between 18 and 34 who like sports- it may more specifically those who are online, have spent money online and make more than 50,000 a year.

Well for an adwords consultant like me, prospects include anyone who isn't doing adwords optimally. And I've discovered that's just about everybody who's doing adwords.

Let's forget about the advanced things we can do with reports, excel, optimizing ROAS, negative keywords, etc.

I've found that amongst clients some of the BASICS are still neglected.

What I'm thinking of, the most offensive thing right now, is the lack of conversion tracking.

If you haven't installed conversion tracking code from adwords into your thank you page, you just don't get it.

Google has a conflict of interests, you see- the more you pay for ads and the more clicks you generate, the more money they make. But still they want you to be happy, so they have plenty of help pages on increasing click through rate (CTR), tracking conversions, etc. And they certify AdWords Qualified Individuals (professionals) like me once we have a certain amount of experience and pass a rigorous third-party exam.

But you know what they don't do? They don't show the conversion rate of ads next to the CTR. You have to run a report to get that.

So you may end up deleting your more profitable ads. I've seen clients miss out on millions of dollars of revenue doing that.

But of course, if you haven't installed conversion tracking, you won't be able to make any decisions about profitability with adwords- whether it concerns ads or keywords.

Install conversion tracking?

Just do it.

Brian B. Carter, MS is a San Diego e-business consultant who helps helps businesses create new adwords campaigns and optimize existing ones, make more money, get better ROI and find more customers.