Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Building a Customized Maintenance Schedule

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when maintaining your AdWords account is to over-manage it. If you manage your account too often, not only do you run the risk of making changes that do you more harm than good because of making changes based on insignificant data, but you end up spending five or ten times as much time as necessary managing your account.

Unless you have an account with hundreds of conversions a day, daily maintenance (other than initially setting up an account) is likely doing nothing for you other than unnecessarily occupying your time. If you really feel like spending a lot of time improving your AdWords account, focus more on getting into the minds and hearts of your prospects, studying the competition, and sharpening your positioning in the marketplace.

Daily activities

When you first set up an account or a new campaign, check it daily for a few days to make sure that everything is working as expected. You'll catch any incorrect settings, and ensure that you're not bidding too much or too little on keywords and ad groups.

Another time to schedule daily check-ins is the first couple of days after making a major change to your account, such as adding campaigns, adjusting bids by a large amount, or adding or deleting a lot of keywords or ads.

Other than the preceding two suggestions, daily maintenance of an AdWords account bringing in fewer than 500 or 1,000 conversions per month is simply creating too much work ...