Using Microsoft Office Excel to Improve PPC Optimization

The key to a healthly PPC account is constant monitoring.  I’ve found that the filtering tool in Microsoft Office Excel to be an invaluable tool in helping make optimization decisions.  Most recently, I ran a text ad report for an account over a three month period of time.  Using the filtering option, I was able to determine that the ads containing the call to action, “Buy Now” had a cost/conversion three times greater than those ads that did not contain the phrase “Buy Now”.  I know that the call to action was in the second line of ad text.  By using the Custom AutoFilter, I can show all the rows containing “Description 2”.   Conversely, I can the use the Custom AutoFilter to show all rows that don’t contain “Description 2” and then compare metrics.

This data manipulation has been very useful when re-structuring a PPC account.  By filtering keywords, we can easily create logically related groups of keywords to create an account structure that will yield a high quality score.