Ron Popeil and his Rotisserie Cooker are famous for the catch phrase “Just Set it and Forget It.” While this approach may work wonders for perfectly cooking a nice juicy chicken, it will leave your pay per click budget dry and the results unsatisfying.

A successful PPC campaign requires constant monitoring and adjustment. Many companies setup PPC campaigns on their own and don’t touch them for months. Over time things change, like ad serving algorithms, searching behavior and most importantly competition. If you are setting up a campaign and plan to just let it run on its own, you are better investing in Google stock, the ROI is probably higher.

If you are prepared to do the ongoing work, here are some things to keep an eye on:

• Top performing keywords - what is driving the most traffic and ultimately the most conversions?
• Budget allocation - are less important keywords using up all of your budget?
• Click through rate - how well are your ads doing? do you need to write more compelling ads?
• Ad distribution - search results vs. content networks - are the content networks eating up your budget?
• Keyword bids and ad position - how has competition and ad performance affecting these?
• Average cost per click - is it going up? down? why?
• Conversion rate - which keywords perform the best?
• Geo-targeting and the long tail - can you refine your keywords to be more specific?