I've been auditing AdWords accounts since 2005 – it's the first thing that has to be done to understand what's going right, what's going wrong, and what comes next.
I've had a standard approach in all that time, and started off using an excel template and "traffic light" indicators.
But there's more to understanding an AdWords account than just the campaign data - that's just the *Traffic* part.
To be successful you also have to audit the *Conversion* part ("clickthrough for show, Conversion for dough" as I always say).
And the final piece of the Trinity – ECONOMICS
Setting aside the branding activities and deep pockets of larger Corporates, the average small to medium AdWords advertiser should only really have one question: "Am I earning more from AdWords than I am spending?"
The economic value of a click – even for the same keyword – is potentially completely different between advertisers buying the same traffic, but converting it on their website at different rates, and having different sales processes and economic overheads and metrics.
Larry Kim (CEO) may recall consulting with me for some hours a couple of years ago, and recently, Wordstream released their "Grader" tool – so how good is it?
I believe Wordstream's "Grader" to be missing some essential data and quite misrepresentative of other.
(click to enlarge)
For the most part, I agree with their approach, as we are all looking at the same data within an AdWords account.
But, the interpretation of that can vary …