How to Get Keyword Level Sitelink Performance Data

Sitelinks have been a welcomed addition in the PPC world. As my colleague Morgan has mentioned in previous posts, here at SEER in our Sitelink testing we’ve generally observed an overall positive impact for our clients.

Not only are Sitelinks now available for any campaign but they are also now available for Mobile ads.

As use of Sitelinks are expanding, simply relying on the basic, campaign level performance metrics provided in the Adwords interface (Impressions, Clicks, Cost, CTR and Avg. CPC) is not good enough for us here at SEER.

So, we started digging and researching and analyzing … and found a solution!

Here are 3 Quick Steps to Getting Keyword Level Sitelink Performance Data:

1. Make sure you have a Google Analytics account (and that it is linked to your Adwords account)

2. Make sure Auto-Tagging is turned on in your Adwords account

3. Append the following parameters to your Sitelink URLS: ?origin=sitelink1&keyword={keyword}&matchtype={matchtype} (Note: Use a ? to append the first parameter if you have no other parameters in your URL. If there are other parameters use &.)

What will each of these parameters do?

• ?origin=sitelink1 -> This will identify the traffic as Sitelink traffic. Be sure to change ‘Sitelink1’ to ‘Sitelink2’ ‘Sitelink3’ or ‘Sitelink4’ for each Sitelink setup in the Adwords Interface.

• &keyword={keyword} -> This will dynamically insert the keyword that triggered the Sitelink.

• &matchtype={matchtype} -> This will dynamically insert the match type of the keyword that triggered the Sitelink. Match types will be identified in GA as follows: • e=exact match • p=phrase match • b=broad match

Your final Sitelink URL should look something like: www.seerinteractive.com?origin=sitelink1&keyword={keyword}&matchtype={matchtype}

Next, you’ll need to pull the Keyword Level Performance Data from GA. Just follow these 3 Simple Steps: (Note: You can also access this data via the new Adwords Beta in GA by pivoting the data by Keyword and Landing Page, and filtering by 'origin'. You will still need the parameters from above to identify KW match type)

1. In Google Analytics, filter ‘Traffic Sources’ for ‘google/cpc’ (Note: By filtering under ‘Traffic sources’ vs. ‘Content’ you will be able to access conversion data as well)

2. Pivot the data by ‘Landing Page'

3. Filter for ‘origin’

VOILA – you now have a report on Keyword Level Sitelink Performance Data!

Understanding the GA Data:

The URLS in your report will look something like: /?origin=sitelink3&keyword=seerinteractive&matchtype=e

• ?origin=sitelink3 -> This is the Sitelink identifier

• &keyword=seerinteractive -> The term ‘seerinteractive’ triggered the Sitelink

• &matchtype=e -> The term ‘seerinteractive’ was the Exact match term

You now have the granular data to start analyzing Sitelink Performance and developing strategic optimization and testing methods to squeeze more performance out of your Sitelinks!