Nearly everyone who works in pay per click will take over a pay per click account, whether it is from another agency, another consultant, or even from someone else within the company.  Not only do you have to get up to speed with the client’s particular industry, many people have their own way of setting up and managing PPC campaigns.  Here are the things you should check and look at before you start making changes.

Ad Extensions

Does the account have ad extensions set up?  If so, which ones?  And are the ad extensions – particularly sitelinks – working to their full potential?  If they have product pages are they adding appropriate product related extensions such as reviews?

Remarketing

Does the account have any remarketing in place?  If so, is it set up properly?

Remarketing is still considered the hidden gem of pay per click and many people either don’t use it at all or they have set it up without any frequency capping and targeting those poor people for months on end.

Account Structure

This one can be personal, because people have their own way of setting up things.  But the most important thing is that it works for you, so even if the structure isn’t bad, it makes sense to structure it the way that works for you.  It will save you time in the long run, not to mention it will be easier for you to identify any problems or other issues when you know exactly what to look for and where you will find it.

Conversion Tracking

Surprisingly, it is not uncommon to take over a pay per click account only to discover they haven’t been tracking conversions at all, or they are mixing organic with paid conversions together with no suitable way of knowing if a conversion came from a paid Google search ad, a content network paid ad or just simply from an organic Google search result.

Also make sure that they haven’t gone crazy with the conversion tracking where they have redundant conversion tracking or are going with the “we’ll track everything” approach with an over abundance of conversion tracking scripts on the landing page.

Google Display Network

Is GDN set up?  If not, is there a reason not?

Negative Keywords

I always find surprises in negative keyword lists – I have seen large accounts without a single negative keyword or with a handful of only the most off-base keywords related to the market area, or someone has gone so overboard with all the negative keywords that it is surprising they are getting any ad impressions at all.

Landing Pages

Even if your new clients insist their landing pages are perfect, you want to check and make adjustments as needed to improve quality score.  While it should be obvious to make landing page changes, sometimes people are reluctant to change on-page factors when taking over a long standing pay per click account.

Mobile

If they are advertising to mobile users, do they actually have a mobile friendly website?  So many advertisers waste money on mobile traffic when their website is impossible to use on a smartphone.