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7 Simple Steps to Audit Your Own AdWords Account

8 SIMPLE STEPSto Audit Your Own Google Ads Account

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CONTENTS

1. ACCOUNT STRUCTURE & RELEVANCE

2. KEYWORD TARGETING & MATCH TYPES

3. ADWORDS ACCOUNT SETTINGS

4. BUDGET AND BID MANAGEMENT

5. ADTEXT OPTIMISATION AND LANDING PAGES

6. CONVERSION TRACKING & FORECASTING

7. THE AGENCY SECRET - VIEW CHANGE HISTORY

8. REMARKETING – THE MISSING PIECE

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ACCOUNT STRUCTURE & RELEVANCE

Each AdGroup folder should be structured like a Face to Face customer enquiry. 1 Question (Keyword) = 1 Answer (Relevant Ad)

Adgroup( 1 Question + 1 Answer)

Adgroup(6 Questions + 1 Answer)

The headline in all your rotating ads should match the

Keyword in your AdGroup

When your Ad is not answering the keyword searched Google

will penalise you

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KEYWORD TARGETING & MATCH TYPES

ARE YOU USING HIGH MOTIVATION KEYWORDS?

• Spend MORE on location based keywords• Spend LESS on generic or multiple intention keywords

i.e Digital Camera• Spend MORE on specific keywords

i.e Nikon DSLR 5000 ORDigital Camera Stores Brisbane

• Use negative keywords to avoid:Research keywords (Best, Reviews, How to)Irrelevant keywords (Security Camera, CCTV camera)

• Check search terms to ensure traffic is relevant (Advanced)

(Advanced) = Contact us to receive a full audit, free!

DO YOU HAVE MATCH TYPES SET FOR EACH KEYWORD?

WHO ARE MOTIVATED BUYERS?

1. They know what they want2. They want it now

They search for specific things and they want to know where to get it.

Less motivated buyers use generic keywords and don’t know what they want just yet.

Avoid these people.

• Always start with Exact Match keywords only and gradually add Phrase or BMM keywords over time.

• Exact Match keywords are often cheaper and more relevant, (But not always)

• Never mix different match type keywords in a single adgroup.

• Ideally Separate Exact Match Keywords with a separate campaign budget

• Ensure duplicate keywords with different match types don’t conflict (Advanced)

• Ensure BMM match type keywords do not conflict with other BMM keywords. (Advanced)

Exact: [Nikon Cameras] Phrase: “Nikon Cameras” BMM: +Nikon +Cameras

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ADWORDS ACCOUNT SETTINGS

DOES EACH CAMPAIGN HAVE THE CORRECT NETWORK SETTINGS?Incorrect network settings could be costing you thousands in wasted Google spend.Please note that display network is correct for Remarketing or if you are building brand awareness, but ROI is limited. Search Partner network can work for certain products.

ARE YOUR CAMPAIGNS OPTIMISING PERFORMANCE IN LOCATION POCKETS?

Incorrect location settings could be costing you thousands in wasted Google spend.

These networks should be unticked

IS YOUR ACCOUNT BEING OPTIMISED FOR DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETING TO MORE PROFITABLE AUDIENCES

Bidding more or less based on Age or Gender is not sexist, it’s just marketing and if you are not doing this you could be wasting a lot of money.

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ADWORDS ACCOUNT SETTINGS

SELECTING LOCATIONS TO TARGET IS NOT ENOUGH.

You may not realise that you are still paying for traffic not in your desired target location.

If you choose the wrong location options people in any location who are searching about your location will be included in your daily click cost.

If you are limited by budget then it’s highly recommended to change this as shown on the right.

EXCLUDING LOCATIONS ENSURES YOUR BUDGET IS NOT WASTED.

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ADWORDS ACCOUNT SETTINGS

ARE YOUR ADS BURNING THROUGH MONEY WHILE YOU SLEEP It’s surprising how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are completely wasted each day by advertising while your sleeping. Traffic at 3am in the morning will never be as motivated as traffic during normal waking hours. Unless you sell sleeping tablets online, you could be wasting a huge amount of money that is unlikely to convert into sales. You should also have 3 to 5 hour of day and day of week schedules created so we can analyse and bid adjust performance accordingly. You can see the dark blue blocks on the right show the most clicks during different periods of the day. This allows us to optimise and adjust bidding.

HAVE BID ADJUSTMENTS BEEN MADE BASED ON DEVICE PERFORMANCE?Here is one of the most overlooked optimisation tasks and where thousands can be saved or made through optimising device performance.

For this industry it clearly shows much higher performance with mobile devices compared to computers and tablets. Thousands of dollars can be saved by having a negative bid adjustment on both computers and tablets.

While Mobile Devices shows a very low cost per conversion compared to Computers, if you do not have a positive bid adjustment you could missing out on a lot of money.

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BUDGET AND BID MANAGEMENT

If campaigns are limited by budget, this means you’re ads are not displaying to all the available search volume each day. If your budget is severely limited by budget then your top traffic keywords in each should never be in position 1 as shown above. Position 1 attracts the highest cost per click causing your campaigns to reach budget quickly with less clicks. Less clicks equals less enquiries. Position 1 will not generate more enquiries if budget is severely limited.

When campaigns are severely limited by budget the ideal average position is 3.0 to 4.0 allowing for the cheapest cost per click while maintaining high visibility. If your account structure is still not single question, single answer this will not work. Lower cost per click allows for ads to display longer and more clicks to occur for the same daily budget. More clicks equals more enquiries.Finding the average position sweet spot requires bid management tactics. (Advanced)

Check how limited Check how limited

Please note other factors need to be analyzed before making more calculated bid or budget changes. Contact us today to receive a full audit

ARE YOUR CAMPAIGNS MISSING OUT ON ADDITIONAL CLICKS AT NO COST?

ARE SETTINGS FOR BIDDING STRATEGY WASTING YOUR MONEY?

The ONLY time to consider any bidding strategy other than Manual CPC or Maximise Clicks is if you are receiving more than 20 conversions per month from less than 20 similar keywords. Otherwise in our experience it is highly inaccurate. Any type of statistical automation requires a high sample size of data from repetitive trends that is not diluted evenly across the same volume of different keywords. Don’t swallow the pill that Google sells. Remember Google is biased.

Only select enhanced bidding when you have 20 Conversions from less than 20 similar keywords each month.

Only select Conversions and a Target CPA when you have an ROI goal for each product or service and enough conversion volume on isolated keywords.

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ADTEXT OPTIMISATION AND LANDING PAGES

1. Do you have more than one Ad Per Adgroup?

2. Ads with less than 20 clicks Rotating Evenly?

3. Are higher performing ads showing more often?

4. Do have 3 headlines and 2 description lines?

5. Are Ads directing to relevant pages?

ARE YOUR CAMPAIGNS MISSING OUT ON ADDITIONAL CLICKS AT NO COST?If you do not have Ads in your campaigns being optimised you could be missing out on a significant increase in performance. Ad should have no more than 2 rotating at any one time unless you have a large volume of traffic each day. Your rotating ads should also be written with clearly different unique selling benefits or offers to learn what attracts more interest.

AD EXTENSIONSBelow are the list of Ad Extensions which should be set up in your account. More can be added but these are the bare minimum that should be set up.They help to increase visibility and higher click through rates.

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CONVERSION TRACKING & FORECASTING

50% OF ADWORDS CLICKS ARE A WASTE OF MONEY, BUT WHICH 50%?

If you are investing more than $20 a day then tracking Calls from Ads, Calls from Website, Enquiry Forms and Live Chat is valuable. If you spend less than this it may not help your manager to optimise due to a lack of conversion data to make useful changes. However if you want it for reporting purposes then you should request this from your manager. If you have ecommerce this should also be tracked through Analytics and integrated with your Google AdWords. The more valueable site actions we track the more we can optimise and allocate budget and bidding strategies to significantly increase performance.

DO YOU HAVE ENAGAGEMENT GOALS IN PLACE TO FORECAST PERFORMANCE

Most AdWords agencies will spend your marketing budget to learn what resulted in enquiries and what didn’t, to then optimise and spend more budget and repeat the process again. While this eventually works, it is a long and expensive trial and error process to build up enough conversion data to know what worked and what didn’t. There is also the risk that nothing will ever be learned if the conversion enquiries are spread almost evenly across dozens or hundreds of keywords. This is where engagement metrics like session duration and page views can forecast much earlier which keywords are more likely to convert into enquiries before they do, saving you potentially many thousands of dollars in trial and error wasted spend. It is the early tsunami warning to avoid a flood of money going down the drown. If Google Analytics can not be seen as a selection when you click on Columns as shown below, then your AdWords manager is not avoiding the biggest surge of wasted money that can easily occur in your account. Below right you can see the highest volume and cheapest conversions occurred where the Avgsession duration was the highest and the most page views were. Bounce rates are not an issue if you are landing people on the correct page that is relevance to what they search.

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THE AGENCY SECRET - VIEW CHANGE HISTORY

SIMPLE ADWORDS SECRET MOST AGENCIES DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOWMost agencies prefer not to show you everything they do, because if they did, you would be surprised how little occurs with some agencies (not all). You can be assured that if you pay less than $100 a week for management, that very little if any consistent changes occur at all on a weekly or monthly basis. The business math simply does not make it viable to run an agency with overheads and staffing costs unless each AdWords Manager is managing at least 100 clients each. At 100 clients you have less than 10 to 20 minutes per week to manage each account. The law of 80/20 then kicks in, however it’s only 20% of the clients who end up getting regular activity done each week.

To see if your account is in the 80% of accounts not receiving regular optimisation or management, you can easily check the view change history. It provides ultimate transparency in value.

To get a quick snap shot of the most recent activity, click on View Change History, then change the view dates in your top right of screen to the last 30 days.

The most important weekly activity you want to see is bid management changes. If you are not seeing regular bid management changes, then your account is not being optimised to compete against your competitors and is likely overpaying by up to 30% for clicks into Google’s pocket. Google is a live auction and set and forget advertising does not work with Google Advertising, it needs to be managed weekly.

Below is a sample of what you should be able to see. Due to the long list of changes made on each day it is hard to show in a single screen shot, however you should see a large list of bid changes done at least once a week for small budgets, twice a week for medium and 3 times a week for large budgets. The remaining time each week is spent on analysing which is used to make additional changes seen from time to time (monthly or bi-monthly) as enough conversion and engagement data is gathered.

If your business is ecommerce or requires regular product or ad changes this of course will also show in the view change history. It is also worth going back in history to check multiple date ranges to see if there has been a regular methodical approach or just random activity to give the appearance of value.

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REMARKETING – THE MISSING PIECE

NOT REMARKETING TO PREVIOUS WEBSITE VISITORS? STOP EVERYTHING NOW!If you current manager is not doing Remarketing, then I would recommend changing managers. If you don’t have a manager, then pause all your campaigns until you set this up. WHY?

First lets understand what is Remarketing then I will explain why it’s critical to have running.

Does it ever feel like you’re being followed around the internet by the same advertising brands? Chances are you have visited their website or partner site and have been tagged with a remarketing cookie.

Remarketing allows you to tag each visitor who visits your website and follow them with advertising display banners around the internet for up to 540 days. The network of websites that you can be followed on is called the Google Display Network and makes up over 2 million websites. Websites that you visit on a daily basis including, Youtube, Ebay, Amazon, Gumtree, Linkedin, Sky News, and thousands of other popular websites. When your banner displays on any of these websites the only people who will see your banner are those who have previously visited your website.

You see most people by nature don’t easily commit to buying something they want or need, in fact a known fact is that over 97% of people will not make a buying decision the first time they visit your website. So imagine if you have just paid $3 to $4 for me to click on your Google Ad with out remarketing in place. You would not have the opportunity to eventually get me to commit.Without Remarketing you could be wasting up to 97% of your Paid Search advertising budget and missing out on 20, 40 or even 50% increases in profit and revenue.

Advertising without Remarketing is the single most unprofitable thing you can do for your business.

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