Yes! You DO need conversion tracking working in your account or you will not be able to get the best return for your money, if any at all! Why? Because you need to be able to eliminate keywords that you spend A LOT on and NEVER get conversions! A conversion, if you don't know, refers to the desired action a visitor takes on your site, such as a lead generation or sale.

AdWords, Yahoo! and other major engines all have this function. Some smaller second tier engines do not have conversion tracking. But after you have discovered what works in engines where you have tracking you can then apply those lists to the second tier engines.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, but HOW do I set it up? Is it THAT easy?

Yes! It really is not difficult at all! Anyone with even a bit of computer literacy should be able to do this! For AdWords you first click on the "conversion tracking" tab near the top of the main page. Then, click on "get conversion page code" to your left, and continue through all the weird color charts, you don't need to worry about anything but selecting if you need a "lead" or "sale" code. Highlight and copy this short script that appears in the box below! Then take the script, open up your HTML code for the "Thank You" page that exists after someone makes a purchase or fills out a lead form, and put it just before the closing body tag.

Make sure the code doesn't get broken and you get all parts of it, and it goes in this exact spot, within the body tag, before the closing of the tag. It should go on every thank you page that you want to track sales or leads. Again, on the "Thank You" pages after someone has completed the desired action you wish to track. Repeat the process, once for leads, and once for sales if you have both. THAT'S IT! You should be live! You will see a new column appear in your campaign manager that shows number of conversions! Conversion usually take at least a few hours to register. You will get a cost per conversion column, conversions, and conversion rate. You can click into your ad groups and view which exact keywords are converting. Don't make changes yet, give it some time to build up some history, and then start eliminating words and expanding on others that are working. You can also track specific ad copy! The conversion column will be there as well!

Now you can eliminate ad copy and keywords that do not work and capitalize on those that do. You should without a doubt quickly be able to improve the profitability of your campaigns! Wow! Get it going, I promise this is the most important step you can make aside from the structure of your campaigns. (keywords, landing pages, etc).

Best of Luck!