Regularly conducting a PPC audit is crucial for maintaining the health and effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaigns. Whether you’re taking over an existing account or simply performing routine maintenance, a thorough audit helps identify areas for improvement and maximize your return on investment. This step-by-step guide outlines the essential steps involved in a comprehensive PPC audit, ensuring your Google Ads account is in optimal condition. Fast-track your PPC audit! Use the Google Ads Grader to automatically audit your account for free.

Contents

Click to jump to each step of our PPC audit guide:

1. Check your conversion tracking
2. Review your targeting
3. Assess your ad group relevancy
4. Check how many ads are in each ad group
5. Dive into ad assets
6. Review your keyword match types
7. QA your negative keywords
8. Create a game plan

What is a PPC audit?

Before diving into the steps, let’s define a PPC audit. In essence, it’s a comprehensive analysis of a paid advertising account’s structure and effectiveness within platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Facebook Ads. A PPC audit examines the configuration of vital account elements and settings to identify potential issues and optimization opportunities. Regularly auditing your PPC accounts allows you to stay ahead of performance trends and capitalize on opportunities to boost your marketing ROI. Now, let’s delve into the steps of conducting a PPC audit!

1. Ensure accurate conversion tracking

A fundamental aspect of any PPC audit is ensuring proper conversion tracking. Overlooking this critical step is a major pitfall for PPC managers, as it hinders the ability to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. While this should be addressed immediately after setting up an account, a report by Disruptive Advertising revealed that only 58% of 2,000 accounts studied had at least one conversion recorded.

Google has made this setup easier and easier through the years. Use it! Adding to the concern, only half of the accounts claiming to track conversions had the code implemented correctly. This means a mere 29% of all accounts reviewed passed the conversion tracking test. Ensure your newly acquired account doesn’t fall into this category. If conversions are recorded, be wary of these red flags indicating potential tracking issues:

• Identical click and conversion counts: This suggests either incredibly compelling products or the conversion tracking code being placed on landing pages instead of thank you/order confirmation pages.
• High conversion rates with low sales: This points to conversion tracking potentially measuring visits to product or home pages instead of actual order confirmations.
• Suspiciously low conversion counts: This indicates missing conversions, possibly due to untracked phone call conversions or missing tracking codes on new landing pages. If no conversions are registered, prioritize generating and implementing conversion tracking code immediately. By conquering this initial step, you’re setting the foundation for effective Google Ads conversion rate optimization. Get more tips on how to grow your PPC strategy with our free guide to hacking Google Ads!

2. Review campaign-level settings

Configuring campaign targeting settings is a quick and straightforward task, but even minor oversights can significantly impact account performance. (Learn from our clients’ experiences here.) Examine each campaign in your newly acquired account to review and validate the previous owner’s targeting settings for alignment with business objectives.

Key areas to review include:

• Network Settings: Search Network and Google Display Network (GDN) ads have distinct goals, expectations, and performance characteristics (learn more about each network here). Your audit and optimization approach will vary based on the targeted network.
• Mobile Bid Adjustments: If you’re targeting mobile devices, ensure your bid modifiers are sufficient for visibility in mobile searches. Segment performance by device to assess the effectiveness of existing mobile bids. If the company isn’t ready for mobile traffic, set bids to -100% until mobile-preferred ads and landing pages are optimized. Prioritizing this is crucial given the increasing dominance of mobile searches.
• Target Locations: Verify that the company services the regions targeted in the account. Further analyze geo-reports to identify high-performing or underperforming areas and fine-tune targeting accordingly. Congratulations on completing another crucial step in your PPC optimization checklist!

3. Evaluate ad group structure

A general guideline suggests limiting ad groups to 15-20 keywords, serving as a good starting point for audits. Identify ad groups exceeding this threshold in your inherited account, as they likely require the most attention. You might wonder why keyword count matters. While it doesn’t directly impact performance, remember that the same set of ads serves all keywords within an ad group. Large keyword lists often encompass various themes, forcing generic ad copy. Instead, aim for highly granular keywords within each ad group, sharing a common semantic theme. This allows for hyper-specific ads that resonate with searchers’ intent.

Writing an ad for the second, more focused keyword group is undoubtedly easier than the first! Maintaining concise ad groups requires ongoing effort, even with the best intentions. Regular QA and redistribution of irrelevant terms into new ad groups are essential. Find more ways to clean up your campaigns during your PPC audit using our free guide to Google Ads Account Structure.

4. Analyze ad quantity per ad group

Having only one active ad per ad group indicates a lack of ad variation testing, limiting optimization potential. Conversely, excessive active ads suggest either overwhelming testing or neglected test conclusions. The ideal range is two to three ad variations per ad group, striking a balance for effective testing. Once a winner emerges, pause losing ads and introduce new variations.

5. Scrutinize ad assets

Ad assets (formerly ad extensions) are indispensable for crafting competitive ad copy. Ensure your Google Ads account utilizes them effectively.

Ray-Bans demonstrates best practices by incorporating callout and sitelink assets in their ad. While the introduction of ad assets impacting ad rank has prompted wider adoption, their mere presence isn’t enough. Ensure the assets used are relevant and optimized. For instance, if using call assets, ensure adequate staffing to handle incoming calls. Schedule them during business hours if 24/7 availability isn’t feasible. For e-commerce businesses without physical stores, disable location assets to avoid irrelevant Google Maps appearances. Finally, verify sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets accurately reflect offerings and avoid redundancy. Don’t overlook automated assets! Review their performance within Google Ads and opt out of any negatively impacting the account through advanced extension settings.

6. Examine keyword match type settings

A well-managed Google Ads account utilizes a mix of keyword match types, each serving a specific purpose. Broad match aids keyword research, while exact match targets highly qualified searchers.

Running all keywords on the same match type, especially broad match, is a common mistake. While generating traffic, broad match often attracts irrelevant impressions, resulting in poor click-through rates, conversion rates, and Quality Scores. Conversely, relying solely on phrase or exact match can severely limit reach. If the inherited account uses mixed match types, review the implemented strategy for accuracy. Even advanced strategies like tiered bidding require careful examination. Perfect your keyword strategy using our Free Keyword Tool!

7. Conduct negative keyword list quality assurance

Negative keywords are essential for preventing wasted impressions and clicks from unqualified traffic. If the previous manager neglected negatives, proactive identification is crucial. Analyze query reports to identify undesirable search terms triggering your ads and add them as negatives.

Maintaining a comprehensive “master list” of negatives applicable to all campaigns is a best practice. If negatives were used, meticulously review the list. Ensure all terms are genuinely relevant, not hindering desired impressions. Verify match type settings for intended functionality, as incorrect settings (e.g., “exact” match for negatives) can severely limit their effectiveness.

8. Develop your optimization plan

With a thorough understanding of the account’s strengths and weaknesses, you’re ready to formulate an optimization plan. After implementing necessary cleanups, the real optimization work begins. Happy auditing! If, despite applying these tips, you’re seeking further performance improvements, explore our solutions for maximizing your PPC success.

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