I was recently asked to speak at A/B Testing Summit with so many marketing leaders! It was an amazing honor and I totally geek out over analytics and optimizations. I chose to speak on optimizing Google Ads for better ROI.

To add extra value, I decided to share my secret process for optimizing Google Accounts. Here is my 24-point audit process for gaining better rankings, CTR and Conversions.

Potential wasted budget
Review market average for keywords and compare to what the current spend is.

  1. Account activity
    Review what has been completed and setup correctly.
  2. Account diagnostics
    Correct any account pieces, not setup. This is generally in the form of not connecting analytics, setting up demographic tracking, setting up analytics goals and importing those into conversion tracking, etc…
  3. Keyword audit
    Review the keywords to make sure there is a good amount of different type of keywords (broad, broad modifiers, exact and phrase match). Remove underperforming keywords and setup keywords missing. As well as make sure the keywords are logical. For example, you would not want to have keywords for “become a massage therapist” for a massage clinic.
  4. Conversion tracking
    Start by making sure Google hasn’t implemented fake conversions in your list. This is generally int he form of page visits. Add a global tracking code one very page. Then setup goals in analytics and import them into conversion tracking. Make sure to be tracking calls from ads and websites as well. If you are using WordPress, I like to use the WordPress plugin for event tracking as well.
  5. Call tracking
    We use a 3rd party call tracking software to make sure we can hear the calls coming in. We use 33 Mile Radius for ours, but there are a lot of good options out there. This allows us to review and shift tactics if we are getting a lot of spam calls.
  6. Display campaigns
    Generally, clients come to us with only search campaigns, during the setup process we will implement display campaigns as well. This is generally used for remarketing.
  7. Retargeting strategy
    Setup shared audiences from your demographic tracking, as well as remarketing audiences for visitors and past converters.
  8. Negative keywords
    Negative keywords help you from wasting budget, so you should review your keywords monthly and make sure you are adding any keywords that might make you waste money. For example: If your product is “promotional products” a few negative keywords to add are “coupon, coupons, discount, code.”
  9. GEO targeting
    Review your geography analytics and really consider your target audience. Targeted campaigns for locations will have better results than broad matching. This is why we break up locations by small references, such as zip codes or neighborhoods. Then we can place bid adjustments on the higher converting ones.
  10. Quality score distribution
    Review your keywords for quality scores. You will need to add this column in; it is hidden by default. If quality scores are below 5, you need to create landing pages for that keyword or service or dump the keyword altogether.
  11. Budget efficiency
    Sometimes you have a limited budget. A good manager will use the budget in the most efficient manner. Sometimes that means only displaying ads during peak conversion hours, reducing locations, bidding adjustments for mobile vs computer, etc..
  12. Google shopping audit
    Almost all shopping ads are setup incorrectly. I won’t try to get into the process for setup, but just know that we check the setup during an audit to make sure it is not only performing correctly but maximum efforts.
  13. Settings review
    Review all the settings of a campaign to make sure they are setup correctly. For example, many times people will forget to set the Location settings to only show ads IN the selected areas, when the default is anyone with interest in the selected areas.
  14. Ad copy review
    One word change can make a big difference in conversion rates. We are always looking for ways to improve the copy.
  15. Mobile strategy
    Whether creating a campaign for only mobile ads to creating ads that function better on mobile, if your audience converts better on mobile than you need to make sure you are design mobile strategy.
  16. Landing pages
    Your ads should directly corelate to the the same content on the landing page. This will improve your quality score and get you better rankings. Also make sure that landing page is setup with conversion optimization to improve bounce rates and conversion rates.
  17. Mobile apps
  18. Click-through-rate
  19. Strategy review
  20. Keyword efficiency
  21. Market share
  22. Dayparting
  23. Device distribution