How to audit Google campaign- Seven simple steps to audit the campaign

Hello All, I am sharing what I have found during my work experience with Google Adwords and this is what I follow also.

Before to beginning an audit, the first item I ascertain is the account goals. Understanding the goals of an account helps me determine what areas I need to focus on. If an account’s primary aim is to drive volume, I will examining key metrics such as conversion rate and conversion volume. And if goals are more cost efficiency and profit focused, I keep focus on areas such as cost per click and quality scores.

In addition to understanding goals, I ask questions about business processes. For instance, is sales process based off of phone calls? If so, are these calls being tracked? How the calling team answers to the queries and what are the main queries being asked by the potential customers.

Once I have answers to my questions, then I will start with the process of account auditing.

After much trial and error, I have come across a methodology for auditing which I feel will help all of us to understand it better. It is consist of seven steps which I follow:

Step:1).

• Campaign Settings - I begin the audit process by reviewing the campaign settings. At this point, 1^st I basically start checking settings that have been enabled in a way that might negatively impact performance. Examples of incorrect settings may be campaigns opted into Search and Display at the same time, ads not set to ‘rotate indefinitely’, whether or not mobile bid modifiers have been implemented, and if geo targets have been properly set.

Step:2).

• Account Structure/Keywords – At this stage of the audit, I am looking for critical flaws in campaign structure. Some key questions I am trying to answer are:

1.     Does each campaign have a specific theme?

2.     Do the ad groups support the main theme of their respective campaigns?

3.     Do ad groups contain more than 20 keywords, or are the keyword themes varied and conflicting (as per my experience initially more number of keywords are good but as the time passes after running campaign minimum one month we should pause and keep live only the keywords which are performing)?

Step:3).

• Bidding - Once I’ve gone through examining account structure and keywords, I pay close attention to bidding. I am trying to determine if keywords have unnecessarily high cost per clicks. It should be based on the first page bid and the top page bid of that particular keyword. As much I have experienced, accounts suffering from high cost per acquisition are often overpaying for clicks or similar bidding for each keyword. Make sure bidding strategy is examined closely & bid only according to the 1^st page bid & top page bid.

Step:4).

• Ad Copy - When examining ad copy, I am looking to see if at least 2 ads are running per ad group, and if the messaging in each ad is unique from one another. If formal ad testing is not being done, the key here is to at least gain an understanding of what kind of copy is performing well and what isn’t.

Step:5).

• Ad Extensions - When auditing ad extensions I specifically look to see if at least sitelinks are enabled. There may be business reasons why other extensions such as phone, review and location may not be running. If you have a multiple page site, sitelinks are crucial to driving higher click-thru-rate percentages and conversion rates.

Step:6).

Performance by Segment - Reviewing performance by ad position, device, and network is key to understanding total performance. To know this simply can pull data from adwords report that which network or which device is behaving well. After this the placements site are we getting conversion from the relevant site or not, which are the site giving more conversion at lower cost or which are giving at higher cost.

Step:7).

         Landing Page - PPC specific landing pages are vital for success. The standard website generally isn’t honed specifically for conversions – landing pages are.

Four crucial things in landing Page:

• Content
• Form Length & where it is placed (As per my observation basically it should have a full view without scroll)
• Image Placement
• Button Colors

Please share Your ideas for the same, For suggestion & Queries please contact me on my email raviaggarwal03@gmail.com or contact me on 9619444010.