Auditing accounts and processes often uncover flaws and areas of improvement, but it also shines a light on things you’re doing right.
The more rock-solid our methodologies become, the easier we can control and replicate them. Search Engine Journal is giving us the low-down with 4 essential tips for auditing Google Ads accounts.
- Location Performance. Default settings can make or break the success of your ads. While there is a rationale behind defaults, they’re not for everybody. When you’re setting up ads in Google (or Facebook), the location by default will deliver to people in the said location and people who “show interest in” this location. In other words, those outside your specified location will see your ads, too.
Make sure you double-check that location setting. Some metropolitan areas where people commute to and from suburbs would make sense if ads are served in the nearby area.
- Query Matching. Finding queries matching the wrong ad group is not so easy if you’re just going through the Search Query Report. Google does many things well, but sometimes 3rd party tools show us what we need.
Go ahead and download your terms in a .csv and open in Excel. Here you’ll better visualize how many ad groups your search terms match up with.
- Check for Competition Changes. Understanding your competitors’ strategies and how they stack up against you is crucial when forming your own strategies.
Using the Auction Insights tool will let you see breakdowns of impression. Then you can further filter down by device and time. This will reveal shifts in impression share so you know where you should keep a close eye going forward.
For some visual instruction in breaking down these tips, see the full post from Search Engine Journal.
