Google Ads Account Audit For An Old Account - What To Keep In Mind

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What should you do if your client hands you a pre-existing Google Ads account ? They want you to improve the performance of the campaigns and make changes for the best. Are there certain steps to follow when you are going through the account trying to understand the account structure?

Initially, you don't know much about the client, their business or the structure and settings of their Google Ads campaigns. To move past that stage, it is advisable for any campaign manager to understand their client and the business thoroughly, you might want to create a customer persona for their base audience, study the market in-depth and look at the competitors and opportunities through the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis.

Next, we study the account in depth several times before we think of making any changes with the best practices or pointing out the errors in targeting etc. You have to basically comprehend the account through the account creator's perspective, and to do so you have to understand their intentions and know the account in detail, only then can you own it next. It's preferable to go through the main settings first and then look at the campaigns. So now let's begin the step-wise adventure into the old Google Ads account of your new client:

Account KPI performance

What is the Key Performance Index for your client? KPI is the unit of measurement of your client's goals. For a few businesses, their goal is breaking even, for a few it's gathering leads, for others it might be getting traffic. What are the goals of your client? What does your client define success as? What is it that they're the best at? What makes them stand out? These are some important questions you need to ask in the beginning itself. 

Once you know the answers to them, create a report of how the KPI has been performing over a period of time. How long has this account been running from? Has the campaign structure been changed since then? What was the performance like last month? 3 months ago? 6 months ago? a year ago? compare the performance and create a graph to know the peak season of your client and to know how well the performance has been improving or deteriorating over a period of time.

Settings

As mentioned earlier, before we get into the details of the campaign structure, it is mandatory to check out the account settings.
  • Is there any account level targeting? 
  • Is there any preferred location?
    • Are the location divided to granular level? meaning, are the locations divided based on continent, country, city level?
    • Are Geo bidding enabled for the locations? Are their any bid adjustments based on the location of the audience? Check by matching with all channel top geographic locations from Google Analytics connected with this account.
  • Is there a certain language selected for the account? or certain language targeting enabled overall?
  • Are there any specifications for the Ad delivery? (preferable- standard for all, except brand campaigns)
  • Is Ad Rotation enabled? rotate evenly or optimized for conversion?
  • Are there day partition/ Hour Of the Day implemented?
  • Are there any bid modifier set for devices?

Campaigns

  • Does the naming structure make sense and is it easily understandable? Does the hierarchy coincide with the website structure?
  • Are Interest Category or Topic campaigns broken out in to their own campaigns?
  • Are the budgets sufficient? Check impressions loss due to budget/rank.
  • Are there competitors bidding on brand terms? Check the Auction Insight.
  • Are there enabled campaigns with no active Ad Group?
  • Is the labeling appropriate?

Ad groups

  • Are the Ad Groups the subcategories for the main category?
  • Does each Ad Groups  have a maximum of 25 keywords in it?
  • Are there any Single Keyword Ad Groups ?
  • Are there active Ad Groups with no active keywords/ad-copies?

 Keywords

  • Perform a brief Match type analysis (Broad & Broad match modifier, Phrase, Exact)
  • Is there a Match type wise bid conflict? Same keyword in different match types should always have different bid value, it means that the bid value of a certain keyword should go in descending order of the following match types: Exact, Phrase, Broad
  • Check for Duplicate keywords by downloading the keyword report and eliminate the paused ones & the ones within paused campaigns or Ad Groups and filter out the duplicate ones with the help of Excel features.
  • Check for Negative conflict, check if a keyword is present in the negatives list as well.

Ad Copies

  • Does each Ad Group have at least two Ad Copies in it?
  • Are the Ads relevant to the Ad Group/keywords?
  • Are the Ads promoting prices or offers that have expired?
  • Are the Ads grammatically correct or do they contain spelling errors?
  • Are there mobile Ad copies in all ad group?
  • Are the Ad types Standard or Expanded Text Ads? If standard change to ETA's.
  • Have the Ads used maximum characters?
  • Is there any Test running presently?

Landing Pages

  • Are all keyword level landing pages enabled? 
  • Are there any Client specific tracking pixels?
  • Performance for last 3 months of unique URLs. Check for the highest performing landing pages.
  • Are there any landing pages with 301/302 redirection?
  • Are all Destination URLs upgraded to Final URLs? 

Quality Score

  • What are the number of keywords for different Quality Score?
  • Average position vs Quality Score. Do a brief comparison to analyse.
  • Account Quality Score daily tracking. Start practices for improvement.

Ad Extensions

  • Are Sitelink, Call out, Structure Snippet extensions present in all campaigns?
  • Is there a brick and mortar location for the business? In that case, is there a Location extension?
  • Do they accept phone sales? in that case, is Call extension enabled?
    • Do they have the call extensions turned on only during call center/office hours?

Remarketing Lists

  • Is correct tracking pixel implemented, check with the conversion id.
  • Are custom parameters set properly?
  • Are all remarketing lists collecting members?
  • Have all the cookies been set up with lengths that make sense? 30 days & based on returning visitors frequency.
  • Are there list for Top Categories? Thank You page and each abandonment level?

Dynamic Search Ads

  • Check exclusion, "out of stock" are excluded or not?
  • Website no product pages are excluded or not?

Display Ads Campaign

  • Are there any auto placements that can/should be moved to managed?
  • Are remarketing lists assigned in the same campaign?
  • Are there any responsive ads running?
  • Are the ads promoting prices or offers that have expired?
Here we are at the end of the checklist, if you are not satisfied with one analysis, do it twice or even thrice if necessary. But at the end of the final analysis you will definitely have the list of the improvements that can be made in the account.