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Auditing your PPC campaigns is a crucial step in the management process. It’s also an absolute must when you’re taking over an account from a client or stepping into a new role at your job. After all, you need to know where things stand before you can begin making positive changes. Let’s learn about free Google Ads audit which once performed well, you will see drastic positive results in your campaigns.
A PPC audit is like a doctor’s checkup for your campaigns. It’s good to be in the habit of routinely checking in on the health of your PPC efforts.
When you allow unhealthy keywords, ad groups or campaigns to persist in your account, the consequences can be unfortunate. For one, you’re wasting valuable ad spend on ineffective strategies. Second, low performing areas of your campaign can damage your Google Quality Score and hurt even the most prosperous areas of your PPC strategy.
Essentially, your Google ads audit is a much more detailed look at how things are working. You want to find issues and opportunities that you may miss in your routine management tasks.
This article will take an in-depth look at performing a Google ads audit. By looking at each step of the process, marketers will be to apply the knowledge to their own PPC campaigns and ensure that no small details are overlooked.
In a broad stroke, the goal of a PPC account audit is to check in on the status of your campaigns, ad groups and specific keywords to find areas of concern or missed opportunity.
More specifically, however, this goal of a Google ads audit can be broken down into five key objectives:
No one likes to lose money. Unfortunately, it happens a lot in PPC marketing. There are a lot of ever-changing factors that can negatively impact even your most successful tactics. The keyword that was your crown jewel last month could be hurting your ad budget today.
Wasted spend also occurs when marketers fall into the trap of chasing shiny objects (those too-good-to-be-true keyword opportunities). These end up being less valuable in reality than they first appeared on paper.
Reducing wasted spend isn’t just about saving money. The goal is to free up valuable ad budget that can be allocated elsewhere to produce healthier returns.
There are a few critical areas of concern when trying to find wasted spend:
Achieving success in PPC means continuously working on improving your PPC campaigns and finding new opportunities. PPC is a dynamic marketing environment, which means you always need to be monitoring and making adjustments.
Stagnant campaigns don’t stumble into success on accident. If they are lucky, they manage to maintain a baseline of performance. You don’t want to settle for a baseline; you want your PPC strategies to grow and produce greater returns each month.
Thus, you need to put in the effort to find opportunities that have the potential to grow your PPC account and provide stronger returns.
As you audit PPC account, you should spend some time investigating new revenue opportunities. Are there relevant keywords gaining traction that you can capitalize on? What about new ad format types or features that provide additional value or insights to your efforts?
There are always opportunities present. Your PPC audit is a great time to focus some attention on discovering new ways to improve your online advertising strategies and grow your marketing returns.
As you’re making changes to your PPC campaigns and eliminating wasted spend, while simultaneously identifying new sources of ad revenue, you may find that your normal PPC management processes are no longer relevant.
Alternatively, you may find new ways of managing your PPC efforts that are more efficient. In the past few years, automation and machine learning have been impactful forces in the industry. AI-powered tools have helped PPC marketers optimize their time and budgets to achieve more exciting results.
Are you taking advantage of these exciting changes to the digital marketing world?
Essentially, your PPC audit should look at positive changes to enact in your campaigns, but also ways that you can improve as a PPC manager. Is your day-to-day PPC routine achieving the results you want? Or, is it time to shake things up and try a new approach?
Your PPC account is rich with metrics and vital data. The volume of that data grows every second of the day. You may monitor your metrics regularly to protect against significant issues, but how often do you analyze that stream of data and look for noteworthy changes or trends that have been growing over long stretches of time?
When you perform an audit through PPC audit template and you’re checking under the hood of your Google Ads account, it is the perfect time to dig through this data and look for those impactful changes that are affecting your campaigns.
These actionable insights are vital for your growth as a PPC marketer, as well as the future success of your Google Ads strategy. For example, looking at keyword data can help you grasp what topics, features and offers resonate most with your target customers.
These insights can be used to inform your entire marketing strategy, even beyond the realm of PPC!
As you’re exploring your data, you’ll sometimes notice a possible correlation. You’ll see a growing trend that you think may lead to a winning opportunity but you aren’t sure yet. The data needs time to mature.
Make notes of these assumptions and potential data relationships and, when you Google Ads audit, follow up with these areas of interest. Now that the data has had time to mature, is there enough evidence to validate the assumption?
It’s important when approaching any kind of data to not jump to immediate conclusions. Making decisions based on inaccurate data can be extremely volatile. If you think that you’ve located a significant data trend, it will still be there the next time you audit your PPC account.
If there still isn’t the data to support your assumption, the correlation may not be as strong as you first thought.
With the goals of your Google Ads audit in mind, you now need to think about how you will perform this checkup. There are many different layers to your Google Ads account and each one plays a role in successful PPC marketing.
For this reason, your Google Ads audit checklist needs to cover even the smallest details of your Google Ads account. You don’t want to overlook anything!
These 5 steps are designed to ensure that you turn over every rock, examine every small detail and discover every single way to improve and repair your Google Ads account.
Here is a quick rundown of the steps needed to conduct a free Google Ads audit in 2022:
The next sections of this article will take a detailed look at each step and the individual tasks covered the Google Ads audit process.
The first stop on your paid search audit tour is at the very top: the account level. Most PPC marketers won’t have any issues at this level. However, these are the problems that will affect your entire PPC strategy.
Even if you’re absolutely sure that there’s nothing wrong with your account settings, take a second and even a third look. You don’t want a small oversight to be the source of substantial problems that get in the way of your PPC marketing success.
Here’s a quick checklist of the tasks that you want to cover in this stage:
In the Digital Age, marketers need to use every tool and ounce of technology to their advantage. Google does a wonderful job of making this easy by allowing users to link their Google Ads account with other Google services (Google Analytics, Google Business, Google Ads Editor, etc.)
Merging these accounts creates a complete view of your business and PPC advertising’s role in your broader marketing strategy.
It also makes your life a lot more convenient!
For example, you can import your conversion goals and audiences from Google Analytics directly into Google Ads. You can also analyze your campaign performance through Google Analytics and compare it to your other marketing channels.
But, a lot of marketers miss this tremendous convenience by failing to connect these accounts together. As you audit your Google Ads account, check whether you’ve linked your other Google services.
The Liz-Rodnitzky Ratio is a fast and efficient way to analyze your PPC account. It requires that you’ve correctly implemented conversion tracking and have a sufficient amount of conversion and CTR data available on your PPC account. Essentially, this ratio compares the total cost of conversions versus the cost of traffic from clicks that convert at least once.
Ideally, your L/R ratio should be between 1.5 and 2.0. If it is below this range, it is a sign that your PPC efforts are too conservative. You could be missing out on conversions because you aren’t aggressive enough. Add some new keywords, look at Google’s “recommendations tab” and put some more effort into your search network campaigns.
If your L/R ratio is higher than that ideal range, then you are too aggressive. You are mismanaging your campaigns and wasting valuable ad spend. To fix this, you need to edit your negative keyword list, lower bids for keywords that aren’t providing returns and pause severely underperforming keywords.
Your Google Ads account should be well organized. This means having a logical structure to your campaigns that will trickle down into the ad groups, keywords, and so on. The simple truth is that if your account is disorganized, then the rest of your strategies that follow will be equally chaotic.
Account organization also involves the details surrounding your management processes. Who is in charge of monitoring and making changes to the PPC account? How often are these changes made? Where and how are changes being documented? Are you making notes or compiling reports? If so, how and where?
These are all questions that you should immediately be able to answer and demonstrate in your Google Ads account. If you don’t have this level of organization, you should develop a plan that will clearly explain these details.
Conversion tracking is an essential component of successful PPC marketing. If you don’t know when PPC efforts lead to conversions and revenue, then it is impossible to measure the success of your campaigns.
Unfortunately, setting up ads conversion tracking can be difficult. For every PPC marketer that has yet to set up conversion tracking, there’s another that has incorrectly implemented it. The latter can be far, far worse.
It seems simple on paper, just input a snippet of code into your website and presto, right? Often, the script isn’t correctly formatted. Plus, if your goals or site changes, then you need to revise your conversion tracking.
Since there are so many mistakes and problems that can arise from conversion tracking, it’s essential to address it each time you perform a paid search audit. Even if you’re certain that it is set up correctly and aligns with your conversion goals, take a second to make sure that it is still operating as expected.
If you manage a single account with specific products and services being advertised, you can refer to the earlier section on organizing your account, as well as in the next part where the topics of ad group and ads campaign structure will be covered.
If you’re managing multiple accounts, however, then you should create an MCC account in Google Ads. MCC stands for “My Client Center.” It is a special ad account designed for campaign managers that handle multiple clients at once.
This allows you to see all of your various client accounts and campaigns from a single dashboard, which saves a lot of time and annoyance. You can structure your MCC account in a way that makes sense for all of the campaigns and clients you work with.
In the next step, you’ll delve deeper into your campaigns to look at the relevance and structure of PPC campaigns. You’ll start at the campaign level and then dig deeper into keywords, ad copy, ad extensions and even your landing pages.
Relevance is a crucial factor in successful PPC campaigns and you need to make sure that it is present in every aspect of your ad strategy. Structure provides organization and focus to each area of your PPC account, which optimizes your use of time and other resources.
Here is a checklist of tasks for this step:
At the campaign level, there are several elements that you need to touch on in your Google Ads audit. You cannot ignore the following points while doing your campaign audit.
Campaign Names: A lot of marketers make the mistake of naming campaigns as “campaign 1,” “campaign 2,” and so on. These types of names don’t provide any information into what the theme or focus of that campaign is. If this sounds like your Google Ads account, you may want to revise your naming structure.
Campaign Focus: Each campaign should have a clear and distinct focus or goal. When you have this tight focus, you create more relevant and effective ad experiences for prospective customers. Plus, your ad groups will be more organized.
Language: It may sound obvious, but take the time to make sure that you are only advertising in the language that your ads are written.
Network Types: Google Ads has many different ad networks, like the Google Search Network, display network, shopping network, etc. You should think critically about how and if you are utilizing each network. For example, if you are only publishing search ads, is there value in starting a campaign on the Google Display Network?
Brand Versus Non-Brand: A branded campaign will perform differently and require a unique bidding strategy, but it can produce impactful returns. You should have at least one campaign dedicated to branded search terms.
Campaign Budgets: How is your overall ad budget dispersed across your campaigns? If you have a campaign that is over performing, but doesn’t receive enough budget, then you need to make some changes. You must have understanding how to plan for PPC budget spending.
Campaign Settings: Are you still relying on Google Ads’ default campaign settings? If so, then changing these standards will help you optimize your campaigns.
The importance of keywords in PPC marketing cannot be overstated. You absolutely must spend ample time during your Google search advertising audit and adjusting your keyword strategies. Are your match types specific enough? Are you targeting keywords that audiences are actually searching?
Keyword Intent: When users complete searches on Google, they have a specific intent behind that search. You must know the importance of user intent in successful Google Ads campaigns. Often, they just want information. Other times, however, they are looking to take action and find a solution to their problem, which can come in the form of your product or service. Targeting keywords with high intent can be costly, but extremely rewarding and should be mixed into your strategies.
Branded Keywords: Keywords that mention your brand or a brand that you supply can be very valuable. You must check over to bid or not to bid on branded keywords. They often have low competition and costs, but can provide substantial clickthrough numbers. You should have at least one campaign dedicated to targeting branded keywords that is separate from your other activities.
Competitive Keywords: You can also utilize branded keywords for your competitors’ brands. This strategy will help you divert some of the traffic searching for your competitors and bring them to your own products and services.
Negative Keywords List: Your negative keyword list allows you to remove keywords that are not relevant to your goals. They may be pertinent to your type of business, but not to the specific products and services that your company offers. Effective use of negative keyword list will ensure that you don’t spend money on bad clicks and irrelevant traffic.
Low-Quality Keywords: Look at the performance of each keyword across your campaigns and identify the vastly underperforming ones. These are causing your Quality Scores to suffer. Thus, your best option may be to pause keywords that aren’t making the cut.
Keyword Bids: As you’re looking at keywords, it is important to consider whether you’re bidding by individual keywords or ad group. The former is a much better strategy that will optimize your costs for each click.
New Keywords: When you audit your existing keywords, also look at your search term reports for new keyword opportunities. As mentioned earlier, successful PPC marketing is founded in your ability to find new opportunities continuously. You can use keyword planner to identify new keywords.
Within each campaign, you likely have multiple ad groups. This is where a lot of PPC marketers struggle. You may decide you want to spend some extra time restructuring your ad groups.
Sizing: Ad group size is a top concern. The larger the group, the harder it is to ensure that every keyword is relevant to each other and the ad message. Yet, a lot of PPC marketers have 10 – 20 keywords in a single ad group. If this sounds like you, then consider cutting some of the lowest performers in your ad groups. These are the keywords that are least relevant to the rest.
Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs): On the topic of ad group size, you should consider adding single keyword ad groups to your campaigns. With one keyword in the ad group, you can create an ad message specific to the search term, which guarantees relevance. During your PPC audit, you can identify your most crucial keyword opportunities and create SKAGs for these high-priority terms.
Single Product Ad Groups (SPAGs): Another style of ad group you should utilize is the single product ad group. This allows PPC marketers to create messages specifically catered to a choice selection of products. These can be useful tools for promoting brand awareness and capturing branded traffic.
Single Themed Ad Groups (STAGs): The final ad group type centers around a specific theme or topic. This makes it much easier to write ad text that is relevant to every keyword in the group. STAGs make bidding a breeze because each keyword is so closely related that you can bid at the ad group level, instead of on individual keywords.
Match Types: Are you effectively using broad and exact match types in your ad groups? Both options offer unique advantages and should be used together in your campaigns. You can even create duplicate groups with different match types. When you have extra ad budget, you can focus on exact matches. Or, create a wider match type to bring in substantial web traffic.
Bidding: You should always be reviewing your bidding strategies. Setting bids at the ad group level saves time, but they can easily be overridden by bids placed at the keyword level. For example, if your ad group bid is set to $0.50, but you’ve put a bid at $1.00 for a keyword within the ad group, Google will use the latter. This distinction is important as you’re conducting your ad group audit. You may not want your ad group bids to be overridden!
Beta And Alpha Ad Groups: Alpha ad groups primarily utilize exact match keywords. They are designed to capture high-value traffic. Keywords in your alpha ad groups are known to generate traffic that is likely to convert. Beta ad groups, on the other hand, use modified broad-match keywords that will help you better understand how people are searching. Both should be used strategically to improve your PPC efforts.
Ultimately, what drives conversions and traffic is the effectiveness of your ad copy. All of your targeting and bidding can be flawless, but if your ad copy isn’t compelling enough to attract clicks, then the rest of your efforts will fall flat. This is another must-hit section of your Google Ads audit and should be part of your audit checklist.
Clarity: For ad copy to be enticing, it needs to be clear and concise. You want to be detailed and present lots of value to prospective customers, but only when this is presented clearly. Often, simple ad structures work the best because they allow readers to digest the message and act quickly.
Value: Value is what makes your ad message stand out from the rest. Every ad message you create needs to present a unique solution that people have not yet seen before from the competition. So, highlight what makes you distinct from the others and why customers absolutely cannot pass up the opportunity.
Check that your ad messages are displaying value in the form of prices, promotions and exclusive offers. Also, utilize powerful words in your ad copy that will grip the reader and showcase why you’re the best option to solve their needs.
Call To Action: The CTA is a critical part of your ad copy. It is what will ultimately drive a user to click. Even a small change in ad copy can make the difference. So, be sure that you’re testing multiple variations.
During your Google Ads audit, spend some time analyzing how these variations are performing and use your PPC data to choose the best performers. Also, try experimenting with question-based CTAs.
Keywords: Your ad copy must include at least one keyword. You also want to look at targeting long-tail keywords in your ad copy. These unique phrases will improve the relevance of your ads and lead to better ad experiences and improved Quality Scores.
Ad Extensions: Enabling ad extensions will significantly improve your ad copy. Not only will these extensions increase the physical size of your ad, but they will also offer options for customers to call, view your business in maps, visit specific pages within your website and more. You must take the benefits of ad extension.
You should have at least 4 extensions enabled in your campaigns and test the effectiveness of these features. If performance is low, your PPC audit is a good time to investigate why certain sitelinks aren’t receiving traffic or how come call tracking isn’t functionally correctly.
Mobile: As more and more users interact with PPC ads on mobile devices, it is becoming imperative that you make some ad messages specific to mobile users. This means enhancing ad copy with phone numbers or messaging capabilities. If you haven’t begun optimizing ad copy for the mobile world, you absolutely must start now.
The final step in the PPC puzzle is your landing page. You must know how to make a good landing page. This is where users go once they’ve clicked your ad on the Google Search Network. There’s a lot that can go wrong with the landing page experience that can deter people that have clicked your ad. You will still pay that CPC amount, but you won’t receive the valuable conversion that you want.
Relevance: The golden key to a successful landing page experience is relevance. If the landing page doesn’t include the same offer, product, or message style that the user experienced in your ad copy, they are going to click away. This will severely damage your Quality Scores and hurt your overall Google Ads account.
Pay meticulous attention to what your ad copy promises and whether that is apparent on the landing page. In particular, clearly highlight the call-to-action in your landing page and follow it up with relevant content.
Value: You had a very narrow window to attract a click in your ad copy. Now, you have an entire web page (or more) to build on that interest and provide additional value. This is where testimonials, product visuals and other elements shine.
Your landing pages should blow the proverbial socks off prospective customers! Clearly define your unique selling point in an engaging manner that keeps them on the page and closer to converting.
Frictionless: Design is a huge factor in a successful landing page. If there is too much going on, or the page doesn’t load fast enough, or there are too many steps to convert, then you have a negative landing page experience.
Test your landing pages for yourself and see how they are designed. Is there too much going on that it distracts from the core message? Do the elements on the page hurt load times? These are matters that need to be resolved during your audit.
Mobile: Again, mobile is a major factor in today’s marketing environment. Your landing pages also need to be created with mobile users in mind. As you’re testing landing page performance and design, also check how it appears on a smartphone, tablet and other mobile devices.
PPC marketers also have to plan when and how often their ads will appear. For some, this is an afterthought that deserves more attention during a Google Ads audit. If you aren’t strategically thinking about your advertising schedule, then you need to add this dimension to your PPC strategy.
Timing: Analyze the times of day and week when your ads are most successful; this is likely when your audiences are active. Then, target your ad budget to focus on these periods. This will ensure that your ads show when people are most likely to convert.
Rotation: For ad groups that have more than one ad message, you want to check that they are correctly set up to rotate. This will show each ad message equally, thereby giving you the maximum amount of data and results.
Consider Smart Bidding: If you’re working with an ad rotation of different messages, consider using a smart bidding option. This will rely on Google’s algorithm to choose the best ad message for the unique visitor.
The third step of your audit is much shorter, but still a vital part of the process. You need to address your advertising goals and objectives. Often, PPC marketers have an illusion that their goals are set in stone. Thus, they continue operating with year-old goals because they have never taken the time to address whether or not that objective is still relevant.
The same belief can also carry to conversion tracking. Some have the sense that conversion tracking, once set up, will continue working without fault. Unfortunately, it is not something you can set and forget. It needs a routine checkup, just like all of the other parts of your search network campaigns.
The checklist for this step is very straightforward:
You can think of your PPC goals like the rudder of a ship. They point you in the direction you want to be traveling, or think you need to be going. But, some external forces push you around a bit and you need to renegotiate your heading.
This happens a lot with PPC marketing, especially when you’re working towards multiple conversion goals. Reviewing and potentially adjusting your goals and focus will influence your decisions in later parts of your audit. For instance, a new goal target require a different bidding strategy.
There are many different layers to your goals. You may have conversion goals, campaign goals, even organizational goals. Here are the questions to ask yourself during this stage in your Google Ads audit and should be part of your Google Ads audit template:
You want to have a crystal clear vision of what your Google Ads account and PPC strategies will accomplish. With this vision, it becomes much easier to audit your PPC account and make decisions that edge your company closer to its goals.
Conversion tracking allows a PPC marketer to see when, where and how their conversions are made. This is crucial for all PPC marketing strategies, but especially for those that are completing conversions across different channels (website, phone, in-person and so on).
In the pursuit of achieving your goals and completing conversions, you need to properly implement conversion tracking. On the surface, this is a simple matter of adding a snippet of code into your website. In reality, a lot can go wrong with inputting this script into your website.
For one, not all companies view conversions the same. Perhaps, your company is interested in signups, rather than purchases. This needs to be reflected in how you’ve inputted the script into your website.
Here is a checklist of steps to take to ensure that conversion tracking is functioning correctly:
If your conversion tracking is implemented correctly and working the way that you want, you can spend this step in the audit looking at the data. Sometimes, powerful insights are hiding in your conversion tracking data. For instance, you can see how much time it takes a customer to convert after they’ve clicked the ad. Are there ways that you can improve this timing and reduce friction?
One of the reasons that Google Ads is the premier PPC advertising platform is the many features and targeting options that are offered. You can target customers using many different strategies and options. This allows marketers to target very specific audiences.
The 4th step in your PPC audit will look at these targeting options and review whether or not you are using these parameters to the best of their ability.
Targeting can be divided into three categories that will guide the checklist for this step in the Google Ads audit:
Location, location location! You don’t want to display your search network ads in places that you don’t service. Not only will your ad messages be irrelevant to these audiences, but the people that do click, you won’t be able to help.
In a different light, location targeting also helps you zero in on the specific areas where conversions are most likely to occur. For a local restaurant, for example, people that are under a mile away will be much more likely to stop in and eat than individuals that are five or ten miles away.
Targeting the best locations for your business is a wise strategy and you should adjust your bids accordingly.
Google has extensive data about each user on the search network. This data reflects their demographics, lifestyle, interests, shopping behaviors and more. By using the audience targeting option, you can place messages in front of individuals that have demonstrated similar interests as your company’s products. You can use audience targeting to show your ads to most relevant users.
Audience targeting also encompasses remarketing. Remarketing uses cookie data to allow you to place ad messages in front of people that have viewed your site in the past, thereby encouraging them to return.
As you perform your search network campaign audits, look into these audience targeting options and see if any align with your PPC goals.
Mobile devices have exploded in popularity. Many users on the Google Search Network interact with ad content while browsing from their mobile devices. You can create ad experiences that specifically target these users. You must understand the analytics to improve the Google Ads device targeting.
This is an effective strategy for local businesses that want to attract in-person traffic from people searching on-the-go for a store or restaurant. If you haven’t explored device targeting options, maybe it is time to try adjusting bids based on device type!
The final piece to your free Google Ads audit is really a matter of tightening the nuts and bolts of your account. This is the stage where you look at your budget, key metrics, Quality Scores and other details that impact the performance of ads. Even double checking your ad copy for spelling errors is a noteworthy task at this step.
Here’s a checklist to rely on as you audit the performance strategies of your campaigns:
Quality score is one of the most essential aspects of PPC marketing. Your score influences your bids, ad ranks and other crucial campaign components. If Google assigns your campaigns a poor Quality Score, you’ll pay more and likely be kept off of that top ad placement.
As you’re auditing your Google Ads account, look for areas of your strategy that Google has assigned a poor score. This is the Google Search Network’s way of letting you know that your ads may not be relevant or performing well enough to receive a top as placement.
Since Quality Score is such a significant part to successful PPC marketing, here are a few scenarios and what you can do to fix them:
Since your CTR will directly influence your conversion rate, you can look at both of these metrics together. Comparing these two metrics can also provide some insight into what isn’t working in your ad experience. Knowing about good CTR for your campaign is important.
For example, a high CTR but low conversion rate signals a problem on your landing page. Prospective customers are finding your search network ads to be engaging and relevant, but once they are brought to the landing page, they lose interest. This is particularly damaging because you’ll pay for clicks, but not receive any conversion value.
Conversely, a low CTR (which will likely cause a flat conversion rate) indicates that your ad content isn’t enticing enough to draw clicks.
Ideally, your goal is to have a high Clickthrough Rate with an equally high conversion rate. This means that people are clicking and converting. If one metric is struggling, especially CTR, then you need to take immediate steps to remedy the problem.
Your ad budget is the lifeblood of your PPC marketing. If you don’t have budget left on the day, then your ad messages stop appearing and you won’t be receiving clicks, impressions, conversions or any other valuable metrics.
Thus, if you’re going to invest the time, effort and, of course, the money into PPC campaigns, you want to ensure that these resources are well spent. But, if your PPC strategy isn’t well optimized, then you’re at risk of wasting your ad budget.
The biggest culprit behind wasted ad spend is irrelevant keywords. This causes you to spend money on search terms that aren’t actually valuable for your business. Customers may click the ad, but then they discover that your company doesn’t provide the service or product that they are interested in.
For example, if your business is a bakery and you publish ads for “red velvet cake,” your ads will appear when someone searches for “red velvet cake pops.” If your bakery doesn’t make cake pops, search network users will click back to the SERPs to find a bakery that does make cake pops. Yet, you’ve spent the money for their click.
On the topic of wasted spend and your budget, you should have a clear vision of where your ad budget is actually going. It may sound obvious, but many PPC marketers don’t make this connection.
They may know that they are spending $1,000 and receiving $1,500 from their ad efforts, but they don’t have a complete understanding of where the $1,000 is being spent on and how the $1,500 in results is made.
Using your budget effectively is paramount to PPC success. There are always ways to adjust your budgeting strategy to achieve more results. Even if you’re working on a small ad budget, there are ways to make it work!
As you audit your search network campaigns, pay close attention to how you are spending your ad budget and look at ways to utilize this budget more effectively.
In the above scenario, it’s assumed that the PPC marketer knows that they are receiving $1,500 from their ad spend. If you don’t know how much money you’re receiving, then you absolutely need to spend a substantial amount of time analyzing your conversion data until you know what your ROAS is.
Remember, keywords are your bread and butter. So, you’re going to take a second look at them in Step 5 of your free Google Ads audit. Look at your search terms report and filter out the keywords that you’ve added or excluded. What’s remaining are the keywords that you have potentially overlooked. Are there terms from this list that should be added or excluded?
While viewing your search terms report, also look at search volumes. If you have terms in your campaigns that have meager search volume or impressions, you may want to pause these keywords. These terms just aren’t popular enough to exist in your campaigns. They may be seasonal terms that were once popular, but aren’t at the moment.
Ideally, you want your ads to appear in the first or second position. Any ad rank below that will cause you to lose a significant number of impressions because of where your ads appear on the SERPs. If you notice ad ranks that are lower than the second position, it is a sign that you need to improve your Quality Score for this ad group or increase your CPC bid.
Check Impression Shares
Impression share isn’t a metric you should be aiming to improve, but it does give you insight into the amount of runway you have to increase the number of impressions you can get based on your current keyword targets. If you have an impression share higher than 80%, you aren’t going to get much more volume of impressions. Thus, you should focus more on CTR and conversion rate. If your impression share is less than 30% then you need to focus to increase your ad rank and keywords related to more user intent so that your ad may appear to more audience.
The Google Search Network has many policies and guidelines regarding ad content. It’s not uncommon to have a disapproved ad. Google will send you a notification and show the policy that it feels your ad message has breached. You should check if you have any of these notifications during your audit and fix the infractions.
Check your Remarketing Strategy.
Take some time to double-check all of your URLs, both display and final. Are your display URLs optimized for the keyword? Are the final URLs going to the correct landing page? Is this landing page loading quickly and working on all device types? These are all questions that you’ve answered in previous steps, but you should review them once more in this stage.
Even the best writers and ad creators make silly mistakes. Double and triple check your ad copy for errors and mechanical mistakes!
You want to spend money on clicks from prospective customers. You don’t want to spend money on clicks that aren’t customers. It may be a fellow member of your marketing team or a competitor that wants to see how your landing page is structured. It may even be you! In any case, IP exclusions allow you to prevent paying for clicks from people that are not your customers. It will save you some money!
Throughout this free Google Ads audit guide, you’ve seen several different checklists and Google Ads audit template that you can use to ensure that you’ve completed each small task in this extensive process. Here is one more list that summarizes this 5-step audit of your search network campaigns. You can use this list to check that you’ve achieved every major objective of performing a Google Ads audit.
Now you know all the areas which are required to be audited but you must be wondering, how you can analyze them? PPCexpo provides you hassle-free analysis for you. You must examine your account with this Account Audit Report. With this audit template, you can get complete audits and insights about your account performance.
At the end of your Google Ads audit, take the time to record your findings and markdown any changes you’ve made. What takeaways did you learn from this process?
These notes will be invaluable the next time you conduct an audit of your search network campaigns. You’ll be able to quickly look into the changes you made during the last audit and how they have negatively or positively impacted your business.
Remember, having a Google ads audit template should be a routine. Make it part of your schedule to perform this process at least once a month!
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