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It’s always good to revisit an account and check in on important components such as budgets, settings, and goals.

Some of these are not so obvious because they tend to be buried in the account or set up at an earlier in time with account creation.

Here are a few AdWords optimisation checkpoints you should revisit:

Advertising Goals

Do you know what conversions you are measuring?

Besides conversions directly attributed to revenue, you could track the following:

Leads
Sign-ups
Website interactions
Downloads
Social engagement cues

Check the conversion actions tab to make sure each defined goal is reporting (working). Check the conversion window for the number of days conversions are tracked so that the time frame is appropriate for the conversions action. Likewise, check the conversions count which tracks if “all” or “unique” conversions are tracked.

Budgets

Have your daily budgets been fully utilised each day? Month? In the campaigns tab or dimensions tab, segment data by day to see if the account or campaigns are reaching daily budgets. If they are reaching budgets and getting good results, this is an opportunity to increase the budget and reallocate from less successful campaigns.

Ad Rotation

By default ad rotation is based on clicks, so AdWords will serve ads with the most clicks more often. However, after you have a certain amount of conversion data, it may make the most sense to optimise to ads that convert the best. Ads can also be set to show more evenly over time. This is often used for testing purposes, so follow the test plan and set an end date to take the next steps.

Ad rotation is in setting under advanced settings, ad delivery at the campaign level, and applies to all ads in that campaign.

Mobile

Within a few different tabs, advertisers can find mobile settings that help to improve the mobile ad results for advertisers. In the settings tab under devices, check all mobile bid modifiers and adjust based on results. In each ad group, an advertiser can see if there is an ad copy version designated as mobile preferred. If not, develop a plan for mobile ad copy and include it with a mobile-friendly landing page.

Negative Keywords

When you scroll way down to the end of the list of keywords, there’s a link to negative keywords. Negative keywords can be added at the ad group level, campaign level directly, or via shared lists at the campaign level. Since they are not in-your-face, in the interface, sometimes they are forgotten about. It’s time to review the negative keywords across ad groups and campaigns and determine if these can be transitioned to a shareable list. Look for over-arching themes that can be expanded.