AdWords Account Audit Checklist

Phil Kowalski
Last Updated: November 27, 2023 | Paid Search Marketing
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Here at WordStream, I am not only a Customer Success Specialist, but I am also a Premier Consultant. As a Premier Consultant, I meet with clients every two to four weeks to discuss the state of their account and what they should be doing to improve it. On these calls we can really dig into what our advertisers need to be doing to improve their account, whether that’s setting up brand new remarketing campaigns, digging into how to improve quality score, or helping to analyze advanced metrics in Google Analytics.

Part of my usual process when I get a brand new Premier Consulting client is to first run through a checklist of items to determine what shape the account is in and what areas we can target to work on first together. I focus on the basic structural aspects in an account first, and then work to more advanced topics once the basics are covered.

I’m not going to give away the secret sauce of our Premier Consulting services; however the information I’m going to share in this blog post provides insight into parts of the checklist I go through so you can get a better handle on your own or your clients’ overall account.

AdWords Audit

BONUS: Click here to download a simplified version of this checklist as a PDF.

  1. Campaigns:
    1. Location – Ensure they’re only targeting the locations where they do business.
    2. Language – Make sure they’re only advertising in the language the ads are written in.
    3. Search vs. Display – Check to make sure no campaigns are targeting both the Search Network and Display Network. If there are any, suggest that they split them into separate campaigns.
    4. Mobile – Whether they’re on enhanced campaigns or legacy campaigns, I’ll segment their campaign data by device and check their campaign settings to get a sense if they have evaluated their mobile situation. Conversion data can be significantly different on different platforms and also, some clients are surprised at their ratio of their mobile to desktop traffic.
  2. Ad Groups:
    1. Size – Check out any ad groups that are over 20-30 keywords in size. Chances are they may be able to be broken down into smaller ad groups that will be more focused on a specific topic, which will help them craft better ads and direct to appropriate landing pages.
    2. Topic – Spot check some of the ad groups with the highest clicks, impressions, and cost to make sure that they’re all tightly packed around the same topic. Sometimes even smaller groups can be unfocused and could be targets to split up.
    3. Number of ads – I usually like to see two or three ads per ad group in my clients’ accounts. This means they can test ads against each other to continually optimize (versus if they only had 1 ad running), but also means that they’ll be able to collect actionable data fast enough (if they have 4+ ads running per group it will take longer to collect the data).
  3.  Keywords:
    1. Match Types – The most common thing I look for here is to see if they are using too many broad match keywords – some clients have started working with me with accounts that are only on broad match. In most cases where this occurs, they haven’t had a chance to look into the best match types for their keywords. A second thing I’ll look for is to see if they are using match types that may be too restrictive. For example there are some cases where a phrase match type is used where a modified broad match type would be more appropriate. The phrase match may be too restrictive for the queries the client is actually hoping their keyword will match to.
  4. Search Queries:
    1. In the WordStream Advisor software, I’ll jump into their QueryStream on the account level and look through their search queries with the most impressions, cost, and clicks. This can indicate that there’s work to do adding negative keywords and/or changing match types on keywords. If you’re not using WordStream Advisor, you can get similar information from the Search Query Report in Google.
  5. Other:
    1. Conversion Tracking – If a client doesn’t have conversion tracking set up already, this is always action item number one to get them on the right track.
    2. Ad Extensions – I’ll make sure they’re using appropriate ad extensions for their business and resources.
    3. Other Red Flags – This can include anything that could cause serious problems but doesn’t appear too often. One recent example of something that fit under this bucket was a case where someone was running a product listing ad and regular search ads in the same ad group.

Those are the main basics I’ll take a look at when evaluating a new client’s account and deciding what to focus on during our initial Premier Consulting sessions, but there are plenty of other items on my actual checklist I use for my clients.

Once we have gone through an overview of the basics and have evaluated what shape the account is in, then the true Premier Consulting starts – discussing various advanced tactics and optimizations like scheduling, bidding strategy, possible expansion areas, peel and stick opportunities, etc. However, knowing where an account stands right off the bat is truly the difference between success and struggle.

And if you haven’t already, use our Free Google Ads Performance Grader to get a fast and free audit of your account!

Meet The Author

Phil Kowalski

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