What conversions should I track in Google Ads?

A conversion is the action you want someone to take, such as a phone call or a form submission. Conversion tracking tells Google when that happens, so it can learn which searches, keywords and people lead to enquiries. Without it, Google is working blind.

Start with calls and form submissions. These are your main conversions.

Before you can tell whether a keyword works, it usually has to spend two or three times your average cost per enquiry. Across lots of keywords, that's a lot of money spent finding out.

Engagement conversions fix that. They are smaller actions that suggest someone is interested before they enquire, so Google learns what's likely to work before people convert properly. Good ones include:

• staying on your site longer than average
• scrolling to the bottom of a page
• clicking a call-to-action button before filling in the form
• viewing your pricing page

As a rough guide, most accounts with a cost per enquiry above $20 to $30 should do this, especially if they have lots of keywords. If you only have a few keywords, the point is closer to $50.

Give each engagement conversion a tiny value compared with your main conversions. The values might be something like 100 to 1 in favour of the main conversion.

Set all of your conversions, the main ones and the engagement ones, as primary conversions, so Google bids on all of them. This also means your conversions column will count the engagement actions, so judge your results by the cost of your main conversions, not the total.

Then switch your bidding to optimise for conversion value instead of the number of conversions. Google will favour clicks that lead to real enquiries, because those carry the highest value. But it also gets guidance from the engagement conversions in the meantime, instead of waiting for the main ones.

Check how often each action actually happens before you choose the values. If people scroll to the bottom 100 times for every enquiry, a 100-to-1 ratio means the scrolls add up to as much value as the enquiries, and Google could end up chasing scrollers. This is also an advanced technique, so get your calls and form submissions tracking properly first.

Track calls and forms as your main conversions. If your enquiries are expensive, add small engagement conversions with tiny values, make them all primary, and optimise for conversion value.