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Secrets of AdWords AuditingPresented by:

Courtney Herda, CEO of Smarter Searches

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What We’ll Discuss• What is an audit?• Why conduct one?• Conducting it and prioritizing elements• Maintaining the momentum

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What is a PPC Audit?

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When do you conduct

an audit?

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Use it with new and existing clients.

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New Clients• Onboarding• Establishing baseline performance• Creating existing formatting across accounts• Ensuring goals/tracking are clearly established

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Existing Clients• Error checking• Expanding scope of existing campaigns• Accommodating new products/services/offers• Aligning account with KPIs• Maintaining goal tracking

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Note: Be wary of the date range you use to collect information.

• Give yourself enough time to get relevant data• Consider the size of the account

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Who should conduct an audit?• Someone who isn’t intimately involved• Multiple account managers, if available• Consider outsourcing

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How do you conduct an audit?

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Start Here:• Structure• Settings• Keywords• Ad Copy• Extensions• Landing Page• KPI’s

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Structure• Things to look at:

– Campaign and Ad Group Structure– Keyword themes– Match type strategy– Branded/non-branded

• Do you have a CONSISTENT naming system?

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Settings• Things to look at:

– Display– Language– Location– Day parting– Ad rotation– Budget/pacing– Near match– Bidding strategy

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Settings• Are there locations you should exclude?• Are you doing bid management by location?• Are you customizing your bid for geographical

performance, time of the day, and day of the week?

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Settings• Run a change history report

– 1% of small business advertisers made changes to their account every week

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Keywords• Wasted spend?• Long tail?• Covering enough topics?

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Keywords• 1 in 4 businesses rely exclusively on broad

match• 1 in 5 don’t use a single negative keyword • 43% of small business advertisers haven’t

added a single negative keyword in the last 30 days

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Keywords• Be USER centric• Diagnose poorly performing keywords• Run search query and keyword opportunity

reports• Look at the competition• Add negatives

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Ads• Headlines• Call to Action• Fix disapproved• New format

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Ads• Do you have an end date on your ad tests?• Watch your dynamic keyword insertion and ad

variations• Use the ad preview tool

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Extensions• Use all available to you that make sense• Don’t want foot traffic?• More than one location?

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Extensions• Check for disapprovals• Make sure URLs are current

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Landing Page• Make sure it’s in the right place• Make sure the URL didn’t change• Check content guidelines

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KPI’s• Are you tracking?• Do you have your baseline?• Are you tracking too many KPI’s?

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KPI’s• According to Hubspot, only 53% of companies

track their marketing ROI

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KPI’s• On average, conversions in an AdWords

account come from 9% of the keywords • Useless 91% of keywords eat up 61% of ad

spend • Get rid of the keyword and ad drains

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Running the Audit• Come up with a scoring system• Schedule audits• Use a guide online, a tool, or a spreadsheet to

manage your audits • Use your tools

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Running the Audit• Maximize the latest updates• Follow trend analysis

– What happens seasonally?– What happened last year?– Forecast

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Final Thoughts

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Step back to move forward.• Look at the big picture• Think about your customer

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Don’t be afraid of specificity.• Get granular about ad groups, keywords,

landing pages and content, offers, calls to action

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Reacquaint yourself.• Enhanced campaigns have changed some

functionality• Check the reporting, settings, and updates to

campaigns