Pay per click advertising is a vital internet marketing tool, yet how can you measure the results of PPC marketing strategies? With basic understanding of SEO and PPC plus the use of web analytic tools, you can measure the effectiveness of your Pay per click campaign. Here is the process to learn so that you can know how effective your PPC campaign really is:

1. Integrate PPC with your web analytics tool. Avinash Kaushik, author of the book "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day" recommends using several web analytics tools and integrating your PPC data into it to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Kaushik points out that it's important to have access to the backend of your analytics tools so you know exactly what is happening behind the scenes (instead of paying an SEM agency to do this for you as a service).

2. Identify your key performance indicators. Get the specifics on what element generated income for you. Was it the click to a sales page (a lead capture)? Was it the payment for a transaction? Itemizing what the performance indicator is in your Pay Per Click campaign will allow you to assess and track user behavior so that you can focus on what element actually makes you earn.

3. Keep track of your unique visitors. Unique visitor counts will vary significantly by campaign, and you will need to know exactly how much it cost to attract these visitors, even if they didn't complete a purchase or submit their information. The reason why this is important is because you need to know if the campaign is working. If people are only clicking through to the site but not converting, you may be targeting the wrong keywords.

4. Apply a split test. Online marketers have a technique known as a split test that can identify what are keywords or keyphrases that are bring them the maximum conversions in their respective target markets. A split test can be conducted by running the same advertisement using three different ad service providers at the same time. This will enable your to track clicks, see from where the most clicks are coming from, and pinpoint how your target market finds your website. This data is used to decide which ad service provider will be retained exclusively based on the highest yielding return.

5. Know the cost of each acquisition. When you know how many visitors your website has and how many of them actually generate you income, you can accurately compute the individual acquisition cost of your campaign. This will tell you exactly how much you have spent to get a sale. Then, you can calculate the average selling price and study your ROI.

Measuring the effectiveness of your pay per click marketing strategy can take time and you will need to tweak it as you go along. Still, it's a process that every savvy marketer needs to go through in order to optimize their ads and get the highest conversions from each and every campaign.

Marketing with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most websites can use to find more customers. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the best skills to have when using Adwords - and there are several good training guides available online.