Goal
To reverse engineer your competitor’s Google Ads strategy
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SOP-088
Reverse engineer your competitor's Google Ads Strategy
Perform an in-depth analysis competitors’ Google Ads strategies. Discover their campaign structure, keywords, and offers.
Type
SOPs · DOC
Execution time
~30 minutes
Last updated
22 July 2024
Who does this
The person responsible for Google Ads
Ideal outcome
You have a standardized audit that shows you what your competitor is doing (including the exact ads they promote)
Why it matters
Your competitors (especially if they have been investing in ads for longer than you) might have been optimizing their Google Ads strategy for a while, and they might have strategies in place that you could apply yourself
Before you start
You will need ahrefs, a paid tool
Key steps 19 steps
What is inside 25 headings
1 Analyze Your Competitors’ Google Ads Data 4
- Head over to Ahref’s Site Explorer and login to your account.
- Enter your competitor’s URL and click the search button.
- Click “Paid” on the Traffic by location table to get an overview of your competitor's paid traffic efforts.
- First, analyze the geo table on the right and select the country that you would like to analyze first. (You can go back to this step of the SOP as many times as you need later to run the same audit for different countries)
2 Analyze Your Competitors’ Keywords 2
- Select “Paid Keywords” on the sidebar
- To analyze the keywords relevant to your business, remove branded keywords from the list. To do that, enter your competitor’s name between asterisks in the ‘Exclude’ > ‘Keyword’ filter.
3 Analyze Your Competitors’ Ads 2
- Select “Ads” on the sidebar
- To analyze the ads relevant to your business, remove branded keywords from the list. To do that, enter your competitor’s name between asterisks in the ‘Exclude’ > ‘Keyword’ filter.
4 Analyze Your Competitors’ Landing Pages 2
- Select “Paid Pages” on the sidebar
- To analyze the landing pages relevant to your business, remove branded keywords from the list. To do that, enter your competitor’s name between asterisks in the ‘Exclude’ > ‘Keyword’ filter.
5 Analyze Your Competitors’ Ad Account Structure 7
- Grab the list of keywords that you retrieved in the previous section
- For some (or all, depending on how deep you want to go with your analysis), search them yourself in Google in order to try and trigger your competitor’s ads.
- Open an incognito window in Chrome (⌘+⇧+N on Mac, or Ctrl+⇧+N for Windows)
- Head over to the local version of Google according to the country you selected above (the same you are selecting on your VPN).
- If everything went well, you will likely see your competitor’s ad show up. Click on the ad.
- Check your browser’s URL bar, if your competitor is using UTM parameters, you will be able to see them there:
- That’s it! Repeat the process for as many times as you need until you have a good overview of the targeting, placements, bidding, and account structure that your competitor is using.
6 Summarize Your Findings 2
- Having been through your competitor’s keywords, summarize the data you collected.
- That’s it! You now have a comprehensive overview of your competitor’s Google Ads strategy.
The document DOC
The file is locked
It comes with the SOP Library.
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