How to Conduct a PPC Audit

A PPC audit is a comprehensive review of Google Ads PPC campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and account settings to assess performance and identify areas for improvement.

Using a PPC audit to understand fundamental problems or areas for improvement in your ad campaigns leads to better targeting, bidding and messaging. In doing so you can see results, like a huge 273% increase in achieving overall business goals.

In this article we’ll look at the essential components of a PPC audit checklist for Google Ads, and why without it, businesses are missing big opportunities for improvement and increased ROI.

Understanding PPC Audits

Without PPC audits you’re unable to make informed decisions on changes. Furthermore, they offer you a deep insight into your campaign performance, what works, what doesn’t, and why.

Regular PPC audits help in highlighting areas of wasteful spending, where elements of your campaign are underperforming. That way you can reallocate your budget accordingly to improve ROAS without having to pour more funds into your ad campaign.

The most effective PPC campaigns are ones that are regularly audited and adjusted to maximise their potential. We recommend conducting a PPC audit at least once a quarter.

10 Steps to Conducting a PPC Audit

1. Organise your data and conversion tracking

Having Google Ad data well organised makes conversion tracking easier and more transparent. We recommend using the in-platform pages and graphs, and any third-party analytics dashboards you have to look into each campaign one at a time and analyse its metrics.

At this stage of a PPC audit focus should be on overall conversion tracking, which depends on your business goals. These metrics include:

• Cost-per-click (CPC)
• Cost-per-conversion
• Number of conversions
• Clicks
• Search impression share
• Conversion rates

When organising your data you should also be able to see any areas of immediate concern that need addressing.

If any campaigns are marked as inactive or have unexpectedly low conversion rates, you’ll need to double-check check your tracking codes are all set up correctly.

The more connected your platforms are, e.g. Google Ads to Analytics, CRMs and any dashboards you have, the better and more accurate your conversion tracking will be.

2. Review Quality Scores

As per Google, your Quality Score is a “diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your PPC ad quality compares to other advertisers.”

Your Quality Score is determined by 3 factors:

1. Ad relevance: Does it match user search intent?
2. Expected clickthrough rates: Likelihood of users clicking your ad
3. Landing page experience: How useful is it and does it match user intent for those who click through?

The Quality Score provided is between 1 and 10 and is based on competitor ad comparisons for the keywords targeted.

The higher your ad’s Quality Score, the more chance it has of a better ad placement so it’s delivered to more appropriate users, and at a lower ad cost.

How to check your PPC ad’s Quality Score

1. Go to ‘Campaigns’ in your Google Ads account
2. Click the ‘Audiences, keywords and content’ drop-down and choose ‘Search Keywords’
3. Click the columns icon (upper right-hand corner)
4. Open the Quality Score section under ‘Modify columns for keywords.’ You can then add any (or all) of the components to see their individual Quality Scores for the campaign.

If your Quality Score is below a 7, your ad definitely needs some rejigging.

Being able to break down your Quality Score into its individual elements such as landing page experience and expected clickthrough rates allows you to see if any particular aspect is pulling your average score down.

Then, the next step is to assess and amend your ads to improve your campaign’s delivery.

3. Review keyword research and targeting

Once you have your keywords Quality Score logged, the next step is to review the overall keyword targeting on the ad account.

It’s also a good opportunity to review your negative keywords and see if any of your current search choices drive the wrong traffic and need to be added to the list.

If a real estate developer is running a PPC campaign, for instance, they might want to add negative keywords like “to rent” to their list to ensure ads are aimed at the right demographic of house hunters.

How to check your keyword performance:

1. In your Google Ads account go to the page menu and choose ‘Keywords’
2. Review keywords and search term reports  (search, negative keywords, local search terms, auction insights)

From there you can review details about your keywords including status, and clickthrough rate

See which keywords are driving your traffic and if there are any new ones in the search term report (including long-tail keywords) that will help.

This stage will help you identify any keywords that aren’t performing as well and review seasonal changes that might mean pausing or restarting a particular set of keywords. For example, an educational SaaS company’s PPC strategy doesn’t need to include running back-to-school keywords after August.

4. Review your ad account structure

Now you have tightly grouped keywords, you can look at your ad account structure as a whole during the PPC audit.

Are your keywords organised by theme?

Make sure your keywords are in logical groupings of 5-20, including your primary keyword somewhere in one of the ad elements. The tighter this integration is, the more specific and therefore engaging your ad, leading to a higher clickthrough rate and ROI.

Without having a solid structure with key targets for each group, it’s much harder to see through the noise and refine campaigns accordingly.

When Common Ground was asked to look at Alfresco’s large and complicated ad account, the very first move was to split it into logical groupings of keywords based on conversion rates and bidding costs. That alone helped achieve a 64% reduction in cost-per-click for the ads.

Your analytics dashboard should be helpful here in seeing which keywords need reviewing within the group or removing due to low search volumes.

5. Analyse competitor ads

While reviewing an ad group in a PPC audit, looking at competitors’ positions, messaging and overall strategy can help inform your own.

Choose Auction Insights in Google Ads. From here, you can see impression shares, overlap rates, how often an advertiser’s ad is shown above yours, and how often it’s at the top of the page over yours, as well as how often you did better than competitors.

This is where an SEO service like SEMrush comes in handy. Adding competitors to your account allows ad history tracking and comparison charts to be made. You can see what keywords they’re bidding on and more easily identify keyword gaps to strengthen your PPC campaign and improve its ROAS.

For further inspiration during your PPC audit, evaluate the quality and relevance of competitors’ landing pages, copy and targeting settings.

6. Review ad content and landing pages

After refining keyword targeting and ad groups, the next step in a PPC audit is to look at the actual elements of the ad themselves:

• CTA’s (Call-to-action): Is it enticing and persuasive?
• Landing pages: Do they answer the user’s needs in an engaging manner?
• Ad copy: Does it make the user want to learn more?
• Ad Assets: Are you including Google Ad Assets like sitelinks?
• USPs: Are the unique selling points clearly stated?
• Relevant keywords: Have the top-performing keywords been included in the ad content

7. Optimise Google Assets

Google Assets make campaigns more diverse and engaging. Campaigns are set to automatically deliver different approved assets depending on what it defines as most appropriate or relevant to the user.

Ad assets include:

• Sitelinks: Specific individual pages under the main URL for easier access to set information.
• App promotions: Download in one click from search.
• Images: High-quality visuals that can be delivered with your search ads.
• Locations: If you’re a local business, like a real estate company in a particular city, adding location information refines targeting.
• Phone call extensions: Ever clicked ‘call now?’ straight from a Google link? Chances are it was because of this extension.
• Structured snippets: Add more information to your ad, like categorising offerings, key benefits and features.
• Lead forms: Perfect for lead-generation campaigns. Tie in with a promotion asset like a free eBook to make users more likely to put in their information.
• Callout: Highlight certain benefits or offers under your ad (e.g Free shipping)
• Price: Put the cost of your product or service in the ad.

8. Review and adjust bid strategy

Bid management is a key part of any PPC campaign, and it’s something that should be reviewed during every PPC audit.

By reallocating bids based on performance, ROAS can be improved without needing to add additional funds to your campaigns. Consider the different types of bid strategy and which is most appropriate for your overall business goals. They will vary depending on whether you want more web traffic, higher conversion rates, views, or impressions.

Choosing to leverage automated bidding takes the guesswork out of your campaign. Using Google AI you can set different types of automated bid strategies depending on your overall KPIs.

Both manual and automated bidding allows you to adjust the amount you’re willing to bid based on device type, location, schedule, previous interactions, different demographics, and more.

9. Identify wasted ad spend

During the steps above your PPC audit should have made areas of wasted spend more apparent. E.g. too much money being placed on the wrong keywords, incorrect targeting, or messaging.

Follow best practices and ensure ads are correctly optimised to help negate wasted spend and improve your ROAS. Try testing new automated bidding strategies on high-performing ads and optimising your ad rotation for better delivery.

Hopefully, by following the above, you should have already identified and adjusted your campaigns to bridge these wasted spend gaps.

10. Review targeting settings

All of the above should ensure that by the end of a PPC audit, you have a really good idea of exactly who should be targeted, with what messaging and why.

How to check Google Ads targeting:

1. Go to Google Ads campaigns, click ‘insights and reports’, then choose ‘When & where ads showed’.
2. Review targeting locations and any relevant exclusions

Remember to take into account the times which ads are displayed, the specific demographics targeted, the devices used, and that remarketing parameters are set.

Key Metrics to Analyse During a PPC Audit

No PPC audit is worthwhile without understanding its relevance to the business KPIs and key objectives. Make sure you’re covering the essential areas for analysis and optimisation, including tracking PPC metrics like impressions, traffic, conversions and clickthrough rates.

This should have highlighted any potential areas for concern, or ad performance that isn’t indicative of business goals. For example, an ad could have high rates that look great, but dig a little deeper and it’s reaching the wrong people and won’t actually lead to a full conversion further down the line.

By continually collecting data and analytics that relate to key metrics like those mentioned above, decision-making becomes stronger and more strategic, leading to an overall higher ROAS.

Implementing Changes Based on Audit Findings

The improvement strategies chosen based on a PPC audit’s findings include refining ad copy, landing pages, keywords and ad groups, as covered above. But understanding the importance of implementing these findings is essential.

Based on your audit recommendations, your campaigns can be stronger, more targeted and drive far higher conversion rates without adding extra budget. Don’t be afraid to experiment, you won’t learn what does work without learning what doesn’t. Although, competitor analysis is helpful here in showing the effectiveness of strategies you might not have tried yet.

A/B testing is a tactic marketers should embrace. By comparing different variations of an ad and its elements, you can see what drives better performance. Try evaluating the impact of change in bidding strategy, ad format or targeting on one particular ad using this tactic, without having to roll it out to the whole group.

This saves both time and money on seeing if something is effective and allows for continuous tweaking and improvements through ongoing monitoring of a campaign.

Ultimately, any testing or changes should be done with the overall intention of hitting KPIs. Whether that’s lead generation, higher conversion rates, increased traffic or clickthroughs.

Measuring the Success of PPC Audits

Once you’ve made all the changes your PPC audit highlighted, the next step is tracking their success. Of course, having your tracking optimised is key to this.

Ensure all your systems are linked to the best of their capabilities – from your Google Ads account to Google Analytics, your SEO and analytics dashboards, CRM, email lists and beyond.

The more connected you are, the more informed your tracking is, ultimately leading to higher ROI. If you’re able to add custom event URLs through Tag Manager, or event tracking, then all the better.

Compare rates of your KPIs and overall ad performance pre and post-audit to see any immediate improvements as a result of your efforts. Don’t forget to consider the stage of the user journey being targeted when analysing which touchpoints are most effective.

But more than anything, a successful PPC audit recognises the need for continuous tweaks and improvements. Adaptation and optimisation are the keys to a successful audit and campaign.

In conclusion, without a comprehensive PPC audit, you’re flying blind, making changes and decisions based on guesses and intuition, rather than informed, data-driven insights.

With improved strategies, businesses can spend the same amount of money, but with much better results that drive business growth and strengthen market position.

If you want to learn more about how to leverage your PPC metrics for improved success, we have plenty more articles on PPC management here.