AdWords spring cleaning

By now your family or neighbors have already put the seeds of guilt into your mind about the traditional act of spring cleaning. But what about your AdWords accounts, could they benefit from a similar sort of treatment? 

We can get so used to managing campaigns on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we sometimes forget to analyze the longer periods of time and the results can be shocking. A keyword which accumulates a $10 cost every month without converting might not seem the end of the world, for example, but over a year’s period this can soon add up, especially when considering this can happen across a significant amount of keywords.

So what actions can be taken to make sure your accounts are in check?

Destination URLs
 
It might seem unlikely that your destination URLs are now leading to 404 “page not found” errors but you’d be surprised at what your clients can get up to without you knowing. Now you might sigh at the thought of going through every single account and checking every single link but the team at Google Developers have provided us with an awesome script which will run through multiple accounts under an MCC. The idea of a script might also put you off but before you dismiss I’d suggest at least taking a look as it’s not as complicated to use as you imagine -http://goo.gl/52Pc2f

Landing pages
 
With page errors addressed we can now take a look to see whether the landing pages themselves are actually up to date. Some businesses will happily rely on the same designs and functionality for years and wonder why they aren't performing as well as they have done in the past. The truth is that quality in general improves on a regular basis meaning that if you don’t keep up with competitors then you’re going to be left behind. As an experienced advertiser you will know what works and what doesn't so be sure to pass this information onto your clients if you see issues with their landing pages; sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
 
Duplicate keywords

Hopefully you analyze and take action on the search term report on a regular enough basis that you won’t find any horrible surprises while analysing a longer period of time but it’s still worth taking a look just in case. What you might miss out on daily management however is duplicate keywords. Clients offer their own suggestions, we perform our own research and eventually we can add keywords to campaigns which we had already included from the very beginning.  To quickly identify these duplicate keywords simply go to the View: drop down menu within AdWords Editor and select Duplicate keywords at a suitable level, you can then take action appropriately if duplicate keywords have indeed gathered over time.
 
These are just a few ideas that might need a little bit of spring cleaning attention but I’d love to hear some of your own tips!