See that guy down there? His name is “Stressed Out PPC Manager.” Look at him – he’s so stressed out! You can see it in his furrowed brow. Why, you ask? His accounts are packed with duplicate keywords, but he doesn’t have time to manually remove them.
There’s a simple way to solve his problem: AdWords Editor’s Duplicate Keywords Tool.
Get ready, Stressed Out PPC Manager – your audits are about to reach a whole new level of accuracy.
Too many duplicates, not enough time!
Why PPC Audits Are Necessary
Auditing is an essential part of management for PPC accounts, but the sheer size of an account sometimes makes auditing an arduous process. To avoid placing unnecessarily high bids, it’s important to have efficient and effective ways of going over your account with a fine-toothed comb.
“But how do I do this?” asks Stressed Out PPC Manager.
Duplicate Keywords Tool from AdWords Editor, of course!
The Google AdWords interface allows you to do pretty much everything you need for a PPC audit. Editor, however, offers a simpler way to look at a massive volume of keywords, campaigns, and ad groups. It also shows the settings for each of these.
This means that any inconsistencies – as well as opportunities – to improve the account structure and performance can be identified and implemented quickly.
Could it really be that easy…?
Restructuring Your Account
If you’re like Stressed Out PPC Manager, you know the perils of restructuring campaigns. Whether it’s because of a change from Google (such as the recent device bidding feature) or because you inherited an account mismanaged by your predecessor, campaign restructuring is often a necessary burden.
When making such largescale changes to accounts, you risk duplicating all of your settings, the most common problem being the duplication of keywords.
This can go unnoticed for a long time, causing some pretty serious problems: raising CPCs or showing an ad from an unintended ad group. Essentially, if you bid on identical keywords in two different campaigns or ad groups, the one with the highest bid will win the auction. You are, in effect, competing with yourself!
Enter the Duplicate Keywords Tool.
How to Use Duplicate Keywords Tool
Follow these six simple steps for better PPC management.
- Open AdWords Editor, and select “Get recent changes.”
- Click “Tools” and then “Find duplicate keywords.”
- Choose the campaigns you want to analyse, being careful to ensure the campaigns you select have the same geo and device targeting options
- Note: If running RLSA in separate campaigns, be sure to exclude these and look at them separately.
- Make sure you select “Strict word order,” “Duplicates must have the same match type,” and “Across selected campaigns” – see below.
- Click “Find duplicate keywords,” and you’ll be taken to a view that breaks down the selected campaigns by matching keyword.
- Remove any matching keywords that are in the wrong places.
And that’s it: a quick, simple, and accurate way to do what could otherwise be a frustrating and time-consuming job.
Just look at Stressed Out PPC Manager now!
More like Super Relaxed PPC Manager, amirite?!
This is only one part of the detailed PPC audits we do at Ambergreen. If you’d like some one-on-one advice about how your campaigns stack up, get in touch with our dedicated Paid Media team. We’d love to make you a cup of tea and discuss how to boost your PPC campaigns.
Image Credit: Getty Images
