How do YOU do an AdWords Audit?

[Singularitie]

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

[phubui]

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:

• Ensure that campaign settings are set appropriately/intentionally with particular emphasis on:

• Device bidding

• Location targeting

• Language targeting

• Bid strategy/budget/delivery method

• Ad scheduling and ad rotation

• Check that each ad group has at least two active ads in rotation

• Keywords:

• Sort keywords by cost over the last few months and check for any major bleeders

• Consider changing any broad match keywords to modified broad match

• Check for any negative keyword conflicts

• Run a search term report to find any bleeders (and maybe new keywords to bid on)

• 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).

• For any GDN campaigns, check out the placements report and clean up any bleeders there.

• 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!