Irrespective of the expertise and eyes for detail, a PPC account, more often than not, is imperfect. It does not matter how sincerely one builds or optimize a campaign based on the data, the truth is that one always misses something—if that comes as a surprise to you, just glance through an account, the data compiled over a screen is easy to puzzle anyone. So, what one can do to iron out the imperfections from a PPC account? The answer is the AdWords campaign audit, which involves digging into the PPC account to discover aberrations and identify areas that warrant improvement. For optimum performance of an account, experts recommend, a quick and periodic PPC audit to catch small issues, which, if remain unchecked, often snowballs into bigger issues.
Is there a specific time to perform the audit?
The best time to perform a PPC audit is when the performance of a campaign goes down. However, the best practices advocate periodic audits to optimize the performance of an account further. The audit, in other words, is a performance optimization step, which should be a core part of the management.
What account areas should be focused on while doing audits?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
KPIs, a set of business goals such as leads, revenue, or conversion, is like a barometer, which determines whether a client is getting traction or losing money without achieving goals. All paid search audits, be it done by PPC audit agency or in-house teams, must check out if the campaign is focusing on the right metrics. While evaluating the metrics, one must consult with the client to know what the KPIs are for them.
Date Relevance
Looking at a month-long conversion data and implementing changes entirely based on that set of information does not bear good results—often it worsens the performance of a campaign. That is why always analyze data accumulated over a long range of time. Typically, expert auditors go through three-month data to identify deficiencies; however, at times, to diagnose with the particular performance issue, one needs to analyze a year’s worth of data.
Campaigns Settings
Most campaign managers fail to check the campaign settings again after setting them up at the beginning of the account. And mostly, it is where the issues remain hidden; the most common problem is the clubbing of search and display networks together under one campaign. The next stopover should be:
- Device bid modifiers
- Ad delivery method
- Ad rotation
- Location and language targeting
- Ad scheduling
Checking all these settings thoroughly and matching them with the client’s requirements can optimize an account. Most brief audits are focused around these three areas, however, at times, comprehensive audits offered by white label PPC or an outsourced AdWords management agency covers a multitude of areas.
