If you are reading this, then the chances are that you have already found out that the Google Ads platform is a key part of any modern marketing strategy. We mentioned previously why now if the perfect time to shore up your digital marketing strategies so with this blog we will be going into more depth about how to audit a Google Ads account and why an AdWords audit is important for your ongoing marketing and business.
Why Should You Conduct a Google Ads Audit?
With any type of marketing, online or offline, it is important to constantly revisit your work, focus your tactics and check what is and isn’t working for your business. A Google Adwords audit is a key part of this. Auditing your Google Ads account allows you to keep your Adwords account running smoothly for years to come, allowing you to fine-tune your efforts in order to potentially generate more revenue with less time and money invested. Auditing your Google Ads account allows you to uncover possible hidden issues that need to be fixed to allow your account to run smoothly.
How Will a Google Ads Audit Benefit Your Account?
Conducting a Google Ads account audit can have a number of benefits for your marketing efforts, both short and long term. When you audit Google Ads, you are consciously evaluating the performance of your campaigns, identifying any issues with your account, resolving them and creating a plan of action moving forward the help improve both current and future AdWords marketing campaigns. This can identify where ad spend is wasted, potentially saving you money and generate new campaign ideas for where things are working well for your business.
How to Conduct a Google Ads Audit
Conducting a full Google Ads review requires a number of important steps to get the most from your AdWords account. Here are some of the most important steps to carry out whilst auditing Google Ads.
1. Review Your Google Ads Goals
When auditing a Google Ads account one of the first steps you should take is to review your current Ads goals. Since you first set your account live and added in your ads, your main goals as a business may have changed. Doing a review of the current goals of your Adwords account allows you to align these with what you now want to achieve from these ads. This could be more focussed on website traffic or conversions. Do a quick review of your ad goals to ensure they are working for each of the campaigns and their purpose. If not, take this time to reassess your goals to fit what you want to get out of your Adwords account.
2. Review Your Account Structure
Your next stage in auditing your Google Ads account should be to review the structure of your account and its organisation. Having an organised and structured Google Ads account can help you analyse campaigns more effectively and prevent overlapping of things such as keywords between Ads. Review each of your Google Ads campaigns and ad groups to ensure a streamlined structure. If you have been managing your Google Ads account for a while, the overall structure of your account may have become quite complex. Take some time to review how it is organised and streamline your approach for clear data.
3. Conduct an Account & Campaign Settings Audit
Once you have organised your account structure, the next step in your Google Adwords audit is to take a review of your account and campaign settings. Are these optimised for your needs? Your Google Adwords settings audit could include things such as checking the geographical settings on your campaigns to ensure you are targeting the correct locations. This is also a chance to review your bidding strategy and ad delivery methods as well as your ad budgets.
4. Analyse Your Ad Groups
In order to create focussed and relevant ads that convert, your ad groups themselves need to be focussed and relevant. Creating ad groups that work can lower your costs and improve conversions, so this is an important step in auditing your Google AdWords account.
5. How Effective Are Your Keywords?
Your next step in your Google AdWords audit is to analyse and evaluate your keywords. For example, are negative keywords being used in your campaigns? Are you using the right keywords? Take a look at conversion rates and your CPC to see which keywords are working for you and which are not generating any leads.
6. Audit Your Ads
Had the same test running since the dawn of time on your AdWords account? Now is the time to reassess those A/B tests to see what is actually working. Have you used the appropriate calls to action in ad headlines? How effective have these been? Weed out any ads with medium to low-quality scores and asses their effectiveness and why they may not be working. Doing this regularly as part of your Google Ads audit can help prevent your account from running on a less-than-optimal autopilot.
7. Are Your Landing Pages Working?
A landing page can make or break a PPC campaign. If a customer clicks through on your ad but doesn’t find what they are looking for on your landing page, they are likely to leave the page immediately, costing you money with no conversion or genuine lead generated. Review each of your landing pages to ensure they are relevant and user-friendly.
What Now?
Once you have conducted your Google Ads audit it is important to take these findings and create a plan of action going forward. What was working well within your account? What didn’t work? Did any ideas catch your eye whilst conducting the review that you could put in place and test going forward? Compile all of these findings into a detailed report and a fine-tuned Google AdWords strategy to help your online marketing thrive going forwards.
Need Some Help?
Our PPC team here at SEM Consultants are experts in their field and are perfectly placed to help make the most out of your Google AdWords account. We have worked with clients from a range of industries over the years so know the best way to target and optimise your Google Ads account to work for you. Why not get in touch to see how we can help?