In order to apply your efforts in right direction, it is necessary to keep a check on various ongoing activities and keep measuring them on daily basis. So, if you have launched a PPC campaign then it is necessary to audit it at regular intervals in order to maintain and optimize Bing Ads as well as Google Adwords.
Audits must be conducted every six months or every time you wish to start a new account to make sure that every account is to be optimized to its complete potential. It is not advisable to conduct audits every three months.
Here’s the entire process that can be used to perform PPC audit:
- Use the data from Google Adwords as well as Bing Ads and then conduct audits by using online Adwords or Bing Ads accounts. Download all the data to an excel sheet as this will make easy for you to analyze and visualize the data.
- The excel spreadsheet audit means directors can easily view the changes made as well as the changes made during the audit.
- Have a separate excel sheet for every campaign audit and the save it with the campaign name and date as this will help you to calculate the time from when audit was started. Begin from Campaign level and then slowly move towards keywords.
- Every section of Adwords as well as PPC Analytics has its own separate worksheet along with the main spreadsheet. The excel worksheet may possess full data. For every section of PPC account, one can take a look at highest and lowest impressions as well as clicks, sessions, average cost per click.
- Always keep checking your account structure as this reflects your business. Campaign names must be checked so as to make sure that particular campaign is meant for particular product or place.
- Each of the Adwords account must be linked with Google Analytics Account. During the audit, one must ensure that the account is linked properly and Google Analytics’ tracking code is implemented properly.
- Check the theme of the campaign; relevant themes will make campaign more effective. Brand keywords must be used in separate campaigns as well as non branded keywords. If the campaign is not using the majority of budget then one must adjust it to make sure that it is more than enough.
- Make sure that you are using the budget effectively. If the campaign says that it has limited budget then it needs to be changed. The Ad schedule can be optimized with small area being the target with few bids.
- Change the keyword match type to exact phrase, the delivery method must be shifted to standard and then negative keywords must be added in order to avoid depleted budget.
- Campaigns must run either on search network or on display network and not on both. Make sure you are targeting ideal locations which are the areas where the company has stores or branches.
- Make sure that all locations are to be excluded from those places where company doesn’t have any of its branches.
- Ensure that the best delivery method is to be selected.
- Create Bid strategy keeping in mind your campaign goals. Make use of automatic or manual CPC to focus on clicks. Use theme ad groups properly.
Take Away:
Apart from those mentioned above, there are many more points that one must keep in mind while creating a PPC Campaign and auditing the same. Auditing the campaign is very important and hence it is necessary to keep certain things in mind before auditing the same.
Hope this will be useful to you from next time when you start conducting PPC audits. For more such details, stay tuned to Platinum SEO, a well known PPC Campaign Management firm in Melbourne.