Google Ads Campaign Security & Performance Tips

WE OFFER 5 TIPS TO IMPROVE THE SECURITY & PEFORMANCE OF YOUR GOOGLE ADS ACCOUNT

	Paul Rogers

Cybersecurity is on every business owners mind or at least it should be with the costs of things like click-fraud and hacked accounts at an all time high. If you’re one of the many businesses running Google Ads campaign(s) it’s never too late to review security and performance on your Google Ads account and start reducing your cyber risks and ad spend. Starting with the most obvious tip first, our first tip is;

Tip 1: Enable Two Factor Authentication

Enable two-factor authentication on your Google Ads Account straight away. Google offers it’s own free authenticator app for download on your smartphone to help you with this. I would go further and say that two factor authentication should really be enabled on your entire web presence (Facebook, Email, Personal accounts, Web Admin accounts etc).
Web users can really assume at this stage that passwords alone are not enough to be secure, even strong ones. Dark web sites are openly advertising millions of passwords and the chances are high that your username / email with password is on some list somewhere.

Tip 2: Anti Click-Fraud measures

Google does a reasonable job of ensuring that ad-traffic quality is preserved by preventing botnets and other abuses of your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns but even they will recommend additional measures. It maybe prudent to look at click-fraud software such as Click Guard or Click Ease, which offer an extra layer of protection against abuse in the €79 to €100pmo cost range.
Suffice to say, that many competitors have long brushed off any mantle of online ethics when it comes to getting better ad-ranking, thus, clicking on your ad to burn your budget is not unknown and unfortunately to be expected.

Tip 3: Secure the Machine that your Logging into your Ads-Account with

This may sound obvious, but if your own machine is hacked, the hacker will be basically see the same screen as you do and could take over your session and start racking up ad-spend for promoting their product or service. This happens all the time, so don’t ignore rebooting your maching to install patches or not renewing your AV subscription. If someone else is managing your Ad-Account, it’s import to know whether your Ads account manager is security savvy by asking some questions about security.

Tip 4: Check Ads Diagnostics

On the basic ads performance side, many campaigns are let run and issues go unaddressed. Google will not serve ads for shopping campaigns with no images, out of stock status or certain empty fields. It’s important to view the ads dashboard and review and action the recommendations. Without applying these fixes, your cost per click rate will actually go up as Google will view your ads of poor quality and penalize you.

Tip 5: Setup Google Tagging

Lastly, it’s important that Google Tagging is setup to measure conversions. Setting up tagging on the checkout page is particularly important so you know if your conversion goals are being met. Tagging is essentially a piece of JavaScript code embedded on webpages for tracking purposes. It’s really a necessity for effective campaign monitoring and management of your ad-spend.

Summary

In summary, security and performance reviews should be a very active element of your Ads Campaign otherwise your likely exposing your business to unneccessary risks. Google will offer some security protections but they’re not going to optimise your ad spend or enforce security measures like 2 factor authentication for you.
It’s far to common an issue, where business owners outsource Google Ads campaign management to someone else with a misplaced confidence that everything is being handled. Another scenario is where internal staff setup the campaign and never secure or optimise it over time. This leads back to the common phrase in security “Trust, but Verify”, costly mistakes can happen very easily in the world of Google Ads.