In continuation to the Audit Checklist – Part 1, here is the Part 2 series that will cover the top things to look under your budget, ad group, ad and keywords while auditing your account.
Campaign Budget
1. How is your budget being utilized?
Results can get affected if your budget is not being utilized optimally. There are some effective steps that you could take to stop depletion of your budget, such as adding negative keywords, adjusting bids as per device, time & day of week, location etc.
2. What delivery method have you opted for?
How your budget is being spend through the day is determined by the delivery method selected by you. So, if you think that your budget is getting used up too fast you can opt to choose ‘Standard’ delivery option that evenly distributes your ad.
Ad Groups
1. Does all your ad groups have active ads?
Ideally you should have 2-3 ads in a single ad group. It’s good to test the ads to ascertain which ones are performing and which ones aren’t, but too many ads might create a clutter.
2. How many keywords do you have for each ad group?
An ad group with too many keywords loses focus as the keyword needs to be relevant to the landing page and ad copy. So, ensure that you try to concentrate on the right keywords and keep the numbers restricted to tightly themes keyword sets.
3. Have you added Negative Keywords at ad group level?
For instance, you have separate ad groups for dog food and cat food. You would not wish to show ads of either ad groups on the keywords meant for other, in such a case it is helpful to add negative keywords at ad group level. Similarly, to avoid cannibalization, ad groups with different match types should have negative keywords added of the other ad groups
Ads
1. Does your ad follow AdWords guidelines?
Make sure that you do not break the rules here and create your ad copies as specified by AdWords
2. Does your ad have any grammatical/ spelling mistakes?
You don’t want that to be a reason for customers to not click your ad. So make sure your ads are well written and phrased properly.
3. Is your ad message compelling?
Your messaging greatly defines the way people will perceive your brand, so make sure than your ad is compelling and relevant to the user’s search query.
4. Is there any expired offer in your ad?
Check for any offer or time-bound messaging in your ad and make sure you are not running a redundant ad.
5. Have you been conducting A/B testing of your ad copies?
This is the time to review which of your ads have been performing well and superimpose the high-achiever over the under performer to get more results.
6. Does your ad include the right landing page link?
Check if the landing page your ad is directing to is functional and relevant to the ad messaging as well as the keywords being bidded for. Similarly, check how the Display URL has been mentioned and if the right keyword combination has been used there.
7. Optimize your ads to improve its Ad Rank
If you don’t rank better your ads don’t get the clicks you want. Take action steps to improve the ad rank of poorly ranking ads, by increasing the bids, improving ad relevancy, landing page optimization, etc.
Keywords
1. Are there any keyword conflicts?
Check if there are any negative keywords that are blocking your targeted keywords from triggering your ad.
2. Are there any prospect search terms?
Scan your search terms report to identify any new keywords that are relevant to your campaign and ad messaging. You can bid for these terms and simultaneously add the irrelevant terms as negative keywords to avoid your budget from getting exhausted.
3. Any under-performing keyword?
Check your Quality Score to identify the keywords that have a low score (e.g., under 4). You can further investigate the reason for the same and take necessary actions, such as delete such keywords, move the performing keywords to a separate ad group, improve the performance of the under-performing keywords by enhancing ad relevancy, landing page experience, etc.
4. Are you using the right match type for the keyword?
Double check the match type assigned to the keyword and if you need to modify them. For instance, if you wish to show your ads for only dog food and not search queries such as what food dog eats, how to cook food for dog etc. then might as well add it as phrase match type.
5. Are you using broad match type keywords?
Broad match opens the window to a lot of search queries. So, if you have an ad group with broad match type keywords, then review the terms that are triggering your ad. You must add those terms as negative keywords which are not relevant to your ad messaging.
So, here were another set of tasks that are not to be missed while auditing your PPC account. In the Audit series 3 we will pick up the other sections of Google Ads and discuss the top things to review in it.
Watch out this space!
Note: Karooya’s Negative Keywords Tool is now Free for accounts with ad spend less than $10,000 per month. Save 10-20% of your search ad spend for free. Sign up and start saving your ad budget now.
Related Articles:
Wesley
These are some great points about auditing Adwords account, do you have any scripts that help automate this process, it can be difficult to find ad groups with one ad if you have a large account with 100k+ ad groups.