8 Super PPC Campaign Audit Tips to Increase Campaign Performance

With frequent AdWords updates and improvements, advertisers need to strategize on a continuous basis to get maximum campaign performance and stay head ahead of the competition. Experts recommend performing a PPC campaign audit on a regular basis, at least once every month, to maintain robust PPC performance. Use these simple but highly effective PPC audit tips to help your campaign run to its full potential.

Scan Ad Scheduling Data

A campaign’s targeting settings are an important area of review for super effective AdWords campaign audits. To ensure optimum Ad Schedule settings, analyze ad performance on a day-to-day or hour-to-hour basis. Go to the Settings Tab of your campaign and select Ad Scheduling – click on the Schedule Details drop-down menu and look for specific details such as the number of conversions that took place every day or at particular times during the day.

Examine Device Related Data

Check device settings during the PPC audit to ensure you’re targeting the right devices for your business and adequate budget is allocated to your best-performing devices. Head to campaign settings or ad group settings and click on the Device tab to view device-related data and make immediate bid adjustments. Creating a custom report is another way to evaluate device performance and make changes accordingly.

Also read: Run mobile-specific ad copy for AdWords expanded text ads: Know How

Analyze Location Settings

To obtain qualified clicks and conversions, you need to target audience in the correct town, city or region. Review location targeting settings to make sure you’re focused on the right areas. View geographic performance data to compare how your ads are doing in different locations. You may discover best performing and worst performing locations – use the information to adjust bids or exclude poor performing locations.

Review Ad Extensions

Agencies that offer PPC management services take evaluating ad extensions performance seriously. Certain ad extensions such as call-out extensions, site link extensions and call extensions influence Ad Rank and ad positioning. These should be reviewed regularly to ensure relevance and accuracy. Go to the Ad Extensions tab of your campaign for a thorough review. Check whether information for call-out extensions is up-to-date, site link extensions are functioning and evaluate the performance of all applicable extensions.

Evaluate Keyword Match Types

Agencies offering PPC audit services also review keyword match type for each individual keyword. Many advertisers start with the broad match type because it allows ads to be shown to a wide audience – it’s good for impressions but it can result in poor click-through rates, low conversion rates and a low campaign Quality Score. After some time, consider using more specific ones such as broad match modifier, phrase match, exact match and negative match for optimal campaign performance.

Also read: Golden Rules for PPC Campaigns Management

Assess Ad Group Structure

A simple PPC audit should also include reviewing ad group structure. Often, advertisers start with a single ad group that buckets all keywords but this practice gets in the way of high-quality targeting. During the audit, make sure that an ad group does not have more than fifteen to twenty keywords. Also, make sure that keywords within an ad group share a common theme and lead to a relevant landing page. Any new keywords discovered should be carefully incorporated into a matching ad group.

Review Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are a useful tool to filter clicks from unqualified traffic and reduce ad spend wastage. However, they should be reviewed and updated to make sure they’re relevant and not impeding campaign performance. Pull a Search Term Details report to discover keywords that have generated clicks and identify keywords that are unlikely to lead to clicks or conversions.

There you have it – eight super easy PPC campaign audit tips! Involve white label PPC experts and you’ll be astonished by what you’ll find!