How to link Google AdWords account to Google Analytics?

The reason

As always, before we do something, we need to have a reason why we are doing it. Linking your Adwords and Analytics accounts gives you the ability to:

• See your ad and site performance data in the Adwords report in Google Analytics
• Track your goals from Analytics as conversions in Adwords
• Import Analytics reports in Adwords
• Get busy with remarketing
• Have more data in the Multi-Channel Funnels reports in Analytics

Let’s take a look, shall we?

See your ad and site performance data in the Adwords report in Google Analytics

Just look at all the data available to you in Adwords report of Analytics if you link those two. Every single one of them is very valuable, but I’m not going to go through them. Just bear in mind that this is a major asset to have when it comes to your Google advertising.

Track your goals from Analytics as conversions in Adwords

You know how much conversions are important to understanding the success of your marketing strategy. So, it makes perfect sense to import them into your Adwords account. That way you can see how many conversions every campaign, every ad group, ad, keyword, search term, placement etc. resulted in.

Import Analytics reports in Adwords

Similar to the first reason. Linking these two gives you the ability to import reports like Bounce rate, Average Session Duration, Pages/Sessions etc. Everything you want to see, you got it.

Get busy with remarketing

If you haven’t heard about remarketing yet, you’re missing out on a lot, my friend. Remarketing is the ability to serve ads to people who have previously visited your website. But, this is merely a small definition of what it could be. The options with remarketing are numerous, and anybody can benefit from it.

Have more data in the Multi-Channel Funnels reports in Analytics

Multi-Channel Funnels reports are very important to your understanding of your audience even without Adwords data. But importing Adwords and then analyzing your Conversion paths will definitely change the way you look at your campaign’s performance and your audience.

The Linking

If you are reading this, I take it that you consider the reasons above enough for you to link your Adwords and Analytics. So, go to your Analytics account and then to Admin (gear-looking button). Navigate to the property you want to link. Then click on ‘Adwords linking’.

Add a new link group.

Select the Adwords account you want to link and then click ‘Continue’. Just remember turn ON linking for each view in the property in which you want Adwords data. Also, make sure that auto-tagging is enabled. For now, you don’t have to know what auto-tagging is or what it does, but know that it must be on. Without it, you can’t do some actions you would like and that would be useful to you. We’ll explain more in our future blog posts.

And that’s about it. As I said, explained at the beginning, linking Adwords and Analytics is a absolute must if you are serious about your advertising on Google. So, go on and do it, it doesn’t take much of your time, but it’s very useful.