Google Adwords is not just a fantastic method for driving traffic to a dating site; it is an excellent source of information and knowledge about sites’ key performance drivers, if you know how to query the information:

  • Which keywords are working best for the site?
  • Which keywords are not working and therefore should be culled?
  • Which countries or territories within countries give the best conversions?

Keyword research and analysis is one of the most important activities for any internet marketing campaign. I have built up a large keyword knowledge bank over the last five or six years using Google Adwords, and the analytical tools within Adwords give a great insight into site performance.
The most important action to take is to place an Adwords tracking code into sites. This enables Google to capture the source of traffic to the sites, and most importantly calculate the conversion cost for each registration attempt by a new visitor. This is vital to understand how much it costs to acquire a new sign up and to keep on top of site profitability.

Review your traffic

Over time, this transactional information accumulates into knowledge about a site, especially the key searches that visitors are making, where they are geographically, and which countries or areas convert best. These are some of the techniques to identify new keywords and high performing territories or countries.
The first method is to identify the long tail keywords that Google has assigned to the main “source” keywords, and then search for new keywords with high conversion rates. In the “Keywords” section, click on “Details” and this drop down will appear:

There are three very powerful diagnostic tools available here: Search Terms, Auction Insights and Keyword Diagnosis. The last two will be covered in a separate article.
Under “Search Terms”, select all keywords, a range of them or focus on an individual keyword and analyse it to get an insight into the keyword terms that Google assessed as a good enough match with what visitors were searching for. This is an example of the return for one “source” keyword “live video chat”:

Google has assigned twelve other long tail keyword searches as relevant to the source keyword. It also reports the Clicks, Impressions and Click Through Rate for each search term, as well as the conversion rate, which has the most commercial value.

Keywords

Be aware that different long tail keywords are generated for different performance measures. So for example analyse keywords based on highest number of clicks, the list of keywords for which will be different to the list generated for total number of impressions. Always run an analysis for four or five different performance measures to get as comprehensive an analysis as possible.
For any keywords that are high converters, select them and choose “Add as a keyword”, to automatically populate Adwords campaign with these high converting keywords.
Keep a look out for any long tail keywords for particular countries, regions or cities. If they are generating significant volumes, add them to a campaign and then create a dedicated landing page for each territory and assign it to the specific search term in the campaign. This will increase the relevance of the search term and could increase conversions. The best way to track this is to set up a test and control study.
This means creating two separate Ad Groups for the same keywords; one ad group will point to the main landing page for all keywords, the second will have each keyword pointing to a country / territory / city specific landing page. To read more on how to do set up unique landing pages, read these previous articles on “Building structure and depth to your dating site” and “Landing page customisation – advanced techniques”. Monitor results over time and respond to keyword results accordingly.

In Summary

  • Google Adwords creates a valuable data resource over time, if set up correctly to capture conversion results;
  • Drill down on the best performing “source” keywords to get visibility on the long tail keywords that Google assesses are a good fit with the “source” keyword;
  • Examine the keyword performance data across a number of filters, from number of clicks, to impressions, to conversions;
  • Save the best performing keywords to campaigns and monitor performance;
  • Look for any country / region and / or city specific search terms that perform well, and create a dedicated landing page for each;
  • Assign the dedicated landing page to the relevant keyword(s) in ad groups and monitor progress;
  • Test and control performance of these keywords with separate ad groups targeting different landing pages.

Good luck!