What are the essential metrics to track in pay per click monitoring?

The short answer: the metrics that matter in pay per click monitoring are the ones that connect spend to money: conversions, cost per conversion (cost per lead), conversion rate and, for online stores, return on ad spend. Click-through rate, cost per click, Quality Score and impression share are diagnostic metrics. They explain why the money metrics moved, but on their own they tell you very little.

The money metrics

• Conversions. The enquiries, calls, bookings or sales your ads produce. If these are not tracked properly, every other number is guesswork.
• Cost per conversion (CPA or cost per lead). Spend divided by conversions. Work out what you can afford first: if a new client is worth $3,000 and you close one lead in four, you can pay up to $750 a lead before the ads lose money.
• Conversion rate. The share of clicks that convert. A falling rate usually points at the landing page, the offer or the wrong search terms, not the bid.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS). Revenue divided by spend, for e-commerce. For one national appliance retailer we moved ROAS from 5.1x to 7.9x by fixing the tracking and moving budget to the campaigns that actually sold.

The diagnostic metrics

• Click-through rate (CTR). How often people click after seeing your ad. Low CTR means the ad does not match the search.
• Cost per click (CPC). What each click costs. Across most Australian industries it sits around $3 to $5, from under $1 for product searches to $20 or more for legal and finance terms.
• Quality Score. Google's 1 to 10 rating of your keyword, ad and landing page. Higher scores lower your cost per click.
• Search impression share. The share of eligible searches where your ad showed. Low share with a good cost per lead is a signal to raise the budget.
• The search terms report. The actual searches that triggered your ads. Check it every week and add negatives, or you pay for clicks you never wanted.

What good monitoring looks like

Check spend, conversions and the search terms weekly. Review cost per lead, conversion rate and impression share monthly. Judge a new campaign over 90 days, not 9, because smart bidding needs conversion data to learn. One trap is worth checking today: if your account counts a thank-you page view, a phone click and a form fill as three separate conversions for one enquiry, smart bidding will chase the cheapest of them and your reported cost per lead will look far better than it is.

For a deeper walk-through, read our post on PPC tracking and our breakdown of what Google Ads costs in Australia, including real cost-per-lead figures from client accounts. If you want us to set up and watch these numbers for you, that is part of every Google Search Ads retainer.