Google Ads audit: How to make the most of PPC campaigns

Google Ads campaigns are an integral part of most organizations’ marketing strategies. Paid search traffic is one of the best ways to quickly bring highly targeted visitors to your site.

But are your Google Ads as effective as they can be, or are you just wasting your marketing spend?

A Google Ads audit will help you get the answers.

Read on to discover:

• What a Google Ads audit is
• Why you should do such an audit
• How to perform a Google Ads audit

What is a Google Ads audit?

A Google Ads audit is the process of taking a close look at your existing Google campaigns and ads to evaluate their performance.

A well-executed audit will help you spot issues to fix, identify areas for improvement, and give you a clear overall picture of how well your Google Ads are doing.

Why should you audit your Google Ads campaigns?

In certain cases, a Google Ads audit is simply a natural part of someone taking over an existing Google Ads account. This could be a newly hired paid marketing specialist or an external consultant or paid search agency.

Even if no new people are involved, performing a Google Ads audit should be a routine element of your paid marketing strategy. It’s easy to let old ads run on autopilot. No matter how successful your ads were when you first launched them, there are bound to be new developments that call for further optimization.

Regularly reviewing your Google Ads account is the best way to make sure you’re always getting the most out of your budget.

How to perform a Google Ads audit

The goal of any audit is to provide you with a clear action plan based on the insights you gather. To run a successful Google Ads audit, make sure you take the following steps.

1. Set a benchmark

Before you start the auditing process, define the benchmarks against which you’ll measure performance. Without benchmarks, it’s difficult to evaluate which ads are succeeding.

Some good questions to consider are: What is a “good” conversion rate for your site? How many clicks per 1,000 ad views can you reasonably expect on average?

Setting these benchmarks makes it possible to distinguish between well-performing ads and those you’ll need to improve.

2. Review your account and campaign settings

Go through the entire Google Ads account and review its structure and campaign settings.

Consider the following: Do you have too many separate campaigns? Do the ad groups within each campaign still make sense, or should you restructure them based on different criteria? Does the search-query mix for each ad group point to the need for additional ad groups or a merger of some?

Here you can also review targeting settings, like which devices and locations you’re addressing with your ads.

It’s hard to get things 100% right the first time you set up your Google Ads account. Reviewing historical performance data will help you fine-tune campaign settings and optimize your ads for more effective and efficient paid search.

3. Break down the Google Quality Score

Google’s Quality Score assigns each of your ad/keyword combinations a rating between 0 and 10 based on three factors:

• Ad relevance: How relevant your ad is to people using the keywords you’re targeting.
• Expected clickthrough rate: Compares the clickthrough rate of your ads to all ads targeting the same keywords.
• Landing page experience: Evaluates the landing pages your ads point to—how relevant they are and how easy they are to navigate and engage with.

The higher the Quality Score, the less you’ll pay per click and the more likely your ads are to show up in premium positions.

Slice and review your Quality Score data by campaign, ad group, and keyword. This helps you spot poor-performance areas, so you can optimize them—or stop spending on them.

Start with a complete overview of every keyword that performs below average in any of the three factors above. Tackle the low-hanging fruit first before moving on to further tweaks.

4. Audit your landing pages

Sometimes your landing pages are the issue, not the Google Ads themselves.

Your ads might be highly relevant and drive a strong click-through rate. But if they point to landing pages that don’t match user intent or are difficult to interact with, overall performance will suffer.

Review your landing pages to ensure they:

• Show users what they expect to see based on your Google Ads
• Load quickly and are easy to navigate on any device
• Have clear, visible, and relevant calls to action

You’ll often need new, niche landing pages that match long-tail keywords. An ad for “wooden toddler toys” should ideally go to a page showing wooden toys for toddlers, not a generic “/toys/” category.

Simply put: if your landing pages don’t convert, your Google Ads budget is wasted.

5. Review search terms for potential negative keywords

Your audit must include a look at your list of negative keywords—terms that drive traffic that doesn’t match your value proposition.

For example, if your online bakery targets “cookie,” you might see traffic from people searching how to delete browser cookies. Your content doesn’t help these visitors, so add “browser” to your negative keywords to avoid showing ads for that query.

Keep track of and regularly update your negative keywords to avoid wasting money on irrelevant visitors.

6. Audit your spending allocation

By now, you’ll have a clearer picture of how your campaigns, ad groups, and ads are performing. Use this to guide your bidding strategy and budget allocation.

Increase spend on campaigns and ads that perform well. Reduce or pause spend on ads that drive poorly converting traffic—at least until you can fix or optimize them.

Assessing and adjusting your Google Ads budget on an ongoing basis ensures you consistently get the most value out of your paid search spend.

7. Use web analytics tools to optimize your conversion rate

Once your Google Ads are fully optimized—potentially with a PPC management software—turn your attention to what happens on your website.

Pull reports from your web analytics tool to understand how ads visitors navigate your site, how they convert, and where they run into issues. This indicates whether your site experience matches visitor expectations and search intent.

You can also review heatmaps for your Google Ads landing pages to identify roadblocks and improve call-to-action elements.

When used together, these web analytics insights will help you get more conversions out of every Google Ads click.