Adwords checklist

When running an Adwords campaign make sure you:

1. Check notification and account alerts on the home page

2. Go to the “Campaigns” tab and set the time range

3. Review your keyword performance

4. Review your ads performance

5. Refine your keywords and ads

6. Test new keywords and ads for your campaigns

The rest of this post provides you with more detailed information about the checklist. As I am running my own Adword Campaigns I am literally practicing what I preach.

1. Check notification and account alerts on the home page.

When you log in to your AdWords account you will see notifications and account alerts from Google. It's important to keep an eye out for these updates as they contain important information relevant to your account.

2. Go to the “Campaigns” tab and set the time range.

The time range setting can be found in the top right-hand corner of your account and should be set to a period of 1-4 weeks to get a good indication of recent performance.

3. Review your keyword performance.

Under the “Keywords” tab review:

• Keyword clickthrough rate (CTR). Which keywords are receiving your highest and

lowest CTR?

• Position of your keywords. Are your ads appearing on the first page i.e avg. pos. of 1 -11?

• Keyword status. Are your ads eligible to show?

• Quality score. You can see the quality score for each keyword by clicking on the icon in the status column.

4. Review your ads performance.

Under the "Ads" tab review:

• Ad CTR. If you are testing multiple ads in each ad group check to see which are performing best.

5. Refine your keywords and ads.

• Look at the top performing keywords and ads. Edit those that are not doing well,

using your top performers as a guide as to how they can be improved.

• Delete those that have consistently performed poorly.

• Use negative keywords to eliminate unwanted impressions.

6. Test new keywords and ads for your campaigns.

• Use the keyword tool to get keyword suggestions to add to your campaign.

• If you don't have multiple ads in each ad group, you should try adding some to test which work best for you.

If you have conversion tracking enabled, check which ads and keywords are converting into sales.