Advanced techniques for auditing your SEM accounts to maximize ROI and minimize wasted spend. In this slideshow, we'll evaluate structure, settings, keywords, ad copy and more for maximizing the performance of your AdWords account.

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Secrets of AdWords Auditing
Presented 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