How do YOU do an AdWords Audit?
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Audits Audits Audits!
I am overhauling my AdWords Audit Process and the Documentation and I was wondering if any generous souls our there mind sharing a few ideas or learnings that they have had along the way?
I aim to make it as thorough but as quick and automated (think scripts) as possible.
I'm also 14 pages into the documentation that I will use for some audits that include explanations, recommendations & definitions. I'd love to hear your opinions on what to Audit, how to audit and how to report on it
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Hi Patrick,
I haven't personally used scripts for account auditing, but here's a quick rundown of things I look for when checking out a newly acquired/inherited account:
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Ensure that campaign settings are set appropriately/intentionally with particular emphasis on:
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Device bidding
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Location targeting
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Language targeting
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Bid strategy/budget/delivery method
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Ad scheduling and ad rotation
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Check that each ad group has at least two active ads in rotation
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Keywords:
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Sort keywords by cost over the last few months and check for any major bleeders
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Consider changing any broad match keywords to modified broad match
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Check for any negative keyword conflicts
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Run a search term report to find any bleeders (and maybe new keywords to bid on)
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Check that extensions are being used throughout the account. At minimum, sitelink extensions should be used with at least four per campaign (and each sitelink should be an enhanced sitelink).
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For any GDN campaigns, check out the placements report and clean up any bleeders there.
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Check for any automated rules or scripts that may be running to make sure that anything that may be on is intentional.
I'm sure there's a ton more you could do, but that's everything that would come to mind immediately for me. For settings-related things, I usually just pull up AWE and check things out in there. Makes it a tad faster, but I bet a script-based audit would be awesome!
I've seen pretty cool audit reports in Word doc and ppt form. Either would work well as long as it's organized!
Good luck!
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