Paid Search Audits: What is Your Internal Optimization Strategy?

Paid search marketers spend a lot of time externally optimizing accounts to drive ROI by meticulously testing bids, ad copy, and every other element in SEM. But, how often do you focus on paid search internal optimization? 

Could the extra efficiency you are looking for actually already live inside your accounts just waiting to be found?

Paid search audits: improve marketing effectiveness from inside the walls of your account

There are a variety of ways that search marketers can internally optimize. It’s really about making sure your account is following some of the best practices that have developed over the 20-year history of the channel.

Simple, easy-to-miss account issues can not just hinder your ability to drive the maximum return but they could also be time-consuming and distract you and your team away from other high-value tasks that could benefit your bottom line.

For example… 

Campaign budget caps limiting spend 

Very few campaigns have unlimited budgets. Daily budget caps are needed to ensure that a campaign doesn’t accidentally eat up too much spend. However, they are also a double-edged sword; what you also don’t want are high-performing campaigns running out of budget early in the day when you could easily reallocate money from lower-performing campaigns to keep those winners going. 

Multiple Ads Per Group

One of the tried-and-true best practices in search engine marketing is to load multiple ads in each ad group and let the engine run those ads randomly until the best-performing ad is chosen as the winner. Sometimes bulk actions and auto-optimization rules can limit ad groups to just a single ad without the marketer noticing.

Duplicate Keywords

In the early days of SEM, search marketers realized that if they had the same keyword in multiple ad groups that it would confuse the engines which instance should trigger an ad to appear. There’s little transparency into how or when an engine might match duplicate keywords in an account and that creates instability in the campaign performance numbers. To gain the most control over how a search engine pairs user queries to ads, search marketers are urged to only have one instance of a keyword across an account.  

Targeting Errors

Most large SEM accounts have multiple practitioners attached to them and sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Mistakes can happen and targeting parameters can get deleted or changed. With so many targeting options available (audience, geography, device, language, etc.) it’s important to double-check targeting settings every so often to make sure everything is set correctly. 

Paid search auditing…automated

For most marketers, paid search auditing is a manual, time-consuming, resource-straining process that happens monthly, quarterly, or even only once per year. The main issue, of course, is that most search marketers have so much on their plate with regards to the daily tasks that auditing accounts can seem like a luxury that few can afford. 

Skai Custom Audit automates the workload and eliminates regrets and missed opportunities. Even when your team has turnover, Skai’s Custom Audits rules remain in place so if there is any turnover on your team, the auditing best practices continue to ensure your campaigns perform.

It’s easy. All you do is create the auditing rules that you want the system to check and Skai Custom Audits does the rest every day. 

Paid search auditing is key to maximizing the SEM opportunity via internal account optimization. Before you go looking externally for ROI, make sure that your accounts are set up properly at all times. 

“Over the last twenty years, paid search accounts have grown to become massive in size and scale,” says Kate DuBois, General Manager, Skai Paid Search. “Skai Custom Audits is the first automated solution that helps search marketers keep up with account hygiene and error-free so that they can spend more time on the strategic, high-value work that is needed in today’s competitive environment.”

Sometimes the low-hanging fruit is in your backyard

For more information on paid search auditing, please read Feature Focus: Skai Custom Audits Keeps Your SEM Accounts Clean & In-Line or check out the official Skai Custom Audits capabilities page.

Skai Custom Audits is a feature of Skai Paid Search, the award-winning, industry leader in SEM. 

Want to learn more about how Skai Paid Search can help you be more productive, drive performance, and gain valuable insights to optimize your search engine marketing campaigns? Contact us today or set up a quick and easy demo.

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