This article is about how to diagnose your pay per click campaign. By knowing what to look at you'll be able to fully understand why things are working and if they could be doing better or why they might not be working so hot. Is that a result of the market, or poor campaign management.

While this article is certainly not advanced it is intended for advertisers who are tracking conversions, targeting the right keywords, and are not experience poor performance due to a bad website. Let's say your campaigns are going well for a while but this month things are down. Here's what to look at - again assuming ads and keywords that have historically worked well have not been paused or deleted and your website has not changed.

First thing to look at is the number of clicks. Obviously if clicks are down less people are visiting the your site and responding to it. If clicks are down you want to see if it's due to ad copy or impressions. Maybe an ad that was written didn't work out so hot. If it's not due to ad copy, it could be impressions. Look at the number of impressions on a month to month basis.

For example a term like "gifts for Dad" will obviously have lots of impressions around Fathers Day and in December. Your market place has some seasonal factors too. So if clicks are down, but CTR's have remained the same then it's probably because not as many people are searching for what you offer at this point in time.

This also assumes that your impression share has remained constant. Impression share is a percentage of time that Google displays your ad versus your competitors. If you notice that impression share dropped it could be due to not bidding high enough, and having as high as a click thru rate as your competitors (ad rank).

Ad rank is basically your bid multiplied by quality score. Quality score is mostly driven by click through rate. Assuming Click Thru Rates are decent, and impression share suffers that means you are not bidding aggressively enough.

Remember anytime you improve conversion rates it gives you power to bid higher. When it comes to improving conversion rates don't forget that people want the end result of what the product can do for them. So use pictures and language that support that cause.

People buy emotionally and back it up with logic. Some one searching for "cat toys" want the end resul Generally speaking when clicks drop and it's not due to poor CTR, it's because less impressions were shown.

Knowing what to look at when things appear to be "down" or off track will give you insights as to what's actually causing the problem such as poor campaign management (bidding strategy/ad copy) or external factors in the market place like not as many people searching.

If Adwords has gotten stagnant or there's just not enough hours in the day for your to effectively run your campaigns visit my website for free Google Adwords audit. It's not uncommon for me to reduce costs by 25% or more while increasing sales or leads. Click here for an Adwords Audit.