Auditing an account does not have to take more than a minute in order to see what can be done to do better. It normally takes a trained eye to see the big picture of an account in order to be able to quickly audit it. However, if you know exactly what areas you should be looking at when auditing, you’ll have useful information regarding their account in no time.

Here are some of the most important areas that should be looked at first when auditing a potential Client’s account.

These are the quick points I usually review if I want to get a quick feel for an AdWords account:

1. Conversion Tracking
2. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
3. The See Search Terms Report
4. Budget
5. Network Settings

1. Conversion Tracking: Are We Optimizing for Clicks or for Conversions/Revenue?

When looking at accounts, it’s best to first detect if the account has conversion tracking installed. If your columns look the following way, in which the account has never once had a conversion (all-time), then conversion tracking is not installed.

This is terrible for any account, since it means that the advertiser is just adding money blindly into the account while being unable to track its effectiveness on the action they wanted the searcher to perform after clicking on the ad.

2. CTR: Lower than 1% = Time to Worry

Is the account’s CTR less than 1.0%? CTR is a big indicator of a campaign’s success when the campaign is not tracking any conversion metric.

Click-through-rate, as we know, is the amount of times that an ad is clicked upon divided by the times that it’s been viewed, or the amount of impressions it’s received.

What can be causing a low click-through-rate?

1. Irrelevant ads for your keywords
2. Too many keywords per ad group
3. Being opted into the Display Network
4. Keywords being too broad

3. See Search Terms Report: What’s Really Going On Behind the Scenes

The wrong selection of keywords and match types can basically be like ripping a hole in your pocket and letting the money drain out of it. Check your global See Search Terms report for your campaigns. Especially for keywords with the highest amount of clicks, in order to see what search terms are actually being triggered by those keywords.

I’ll never forget some accounts that I have particularly audited in the past. I’ve actually noticed one-worded broad match keywords triggering random search terms that are completely irrelevant to their product or service offering. A good example is the case of the plumber with the broad match keyword sink repair that spent over $500 dollars in a 30-day period for search terms such as kohler sinks, sinks for sale, used sinks, etc.

Needless to say, the plumber did not sell sinks.

Another example is that of a truck accessory company that sells truck caps. No, not the hats – but the caps that go behind a pickup truck. The search term that spent 80% of the company’s AdWords budget was trucker caps.

4. Budget: Are You Being Limited by your Budget?

The proper use of your budget is extremely important. Check your daily budget periodically and see if you’re reaching your budget, or maybe even exceeding it.

You can do this by using the toggle graph (see screenshot below). You will be able to scroll your mouse over the graph and see if you have gone over budget which most likely will result in your ads not being shown throughout the day:

Ads not being shown throughout the day due to budget limits is one of the biggest mistakes made by small business AdWords accounts. So unless you’re deliberately bidding so that you’re not being shown throughout the day, then the best approach would be to find the optimal cost-per-click and ad position that allows you to be shown all day long.

5. Check Network Settings

Always check what your network settings are. Most beginning advertisers I’ve encountered create a campaign and erroneously opt for both Search and Display Networks. This is obviously a major mistake!

It’s always advisable to have these divvied up into two separate campaigns considering that the comportment/dynamic of both these networks are completely different and as a result, should be separated for all intents and purposes.

The results of having both the Search and Display Networks active in the same campaign can translate to high costs and little return on investment.

There you go! 5 little points that if you know where to look, can show your potential Client where they went wrong and where you can go right with them!