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How To Conduct A Google Ads Audit

A survey of global consumers found that 98% shop online, and with Google ads dominating the online advertising space, the ability to conduct a comprehensive Google Ads audit has become a crucial step for businesses that are looking to optimize their Google Ads marketing strategy. Whether you’re a Google Ads veteran or just getting started, an in-depth audit can help uncover valuable account growth and improvement opportunities. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to conduct a comprehensive Google Ads audit to help you maximize your Google Ads strategy.

 

What Is A Google Ads Audit

Before proceeding with the step-by-step guide, it’s important to understand what a Google Ads audit is and why it’s conducted. A Google Ads audit is a comprehensive analysis of an existing account to identify areas for possible improvement and what could be negatively affecting performance. An audit considers everything within the account, from the basics, such as irrelevant keywords and ad copy, to the more advanced side of Google Ads, such as conversion tracking.

 

The Benefits of Google Ads Audits

According to the Global Search Network, 63% of people have clicked on a Google ad, proving that conducting regular Google Ads audits is more important than ever. They offer many benefits that can improve your account performance and the efficiency of advertising campaigns. Some key advantages include:

Enhanced Ad Relevancy and Quality—Regular audits ensure that your keywords and ad copy are aligned with each other and your target audiences’ search queries. This can improve your ad relevancy and overall quality scores, which in turn can help lower your CPC (cost-per-click) and increase ad visibility.

 

Better Budget Allocation – Google Ads audits can often reveal which campaigns and ad groups drive the most value. This allows you to reallocate the budget to those high-performing campaigns and reduce wasted spending on less effective marketing campaigns. Improving your budget allocation and focusing on highly converting campaigns can also improve your conversion rate across the account.

 

Enhanced Conversion Tracking – The most important aspect of any Google Ads account is robust and accurate conversion tracking, which can provide more accurate data for measuring campaign success and allow you to make more informed decisions.

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Alternatively, you can check out our blog, ‘Google PPC Management Services and Your Business,’ to learn more about PPC and how it can support business growth.

 

Google Ads Audit Step-By-Step Guide

Quick note: I recommend you stick to a structured audit checklist when conducting a Google Ads audit to ensure nothing is missed!

6 Steps For Your Google Ads Audit

Step 1: Ensure conversion tracking has been successfully set up before looking at the data.

Upon onboarding clients from other agencies or in-house teams, I regularly notice conversion tracking and accurate reporting still need to be set up. If this sounds like you, it should be considered priority number one! According to HubSpot’s Inbound Report, companies tracking their marketing efforts are 17x more likely to see a positive ROI (return on investment) than those without tracking.

 

Step 2: Does the campaign structure make sense, considering the size of the business and the marketing goals?

For the few of you reading this who work with huge daily budgets, this may not be as relevant, but for most of you working with small budgets and clients who want 100 conversions per day from a £5 daily budget, this one has you covered. 

We all know that data is king today. Therefore, managers of small accounts should consolidate data under one campaign while keeping the keywords and ad groups highly relevant. Look for opportunities to consolidate ad groups and campaigns that refine and improve your strategy while keeping the data quality high.

 

Step 3: Review the assets in the account. Is anything missing?

Checking if all Google Ads assets have been created and enabled on campaigns is critical to your Google Ads audit. Each asset, whether a site link, callout, structured snippet, or image,  plays a pivotal role in improving the engagement and visibility of your ads. Ensuring all assets have been created and enabled will help maximize the chances of your ads being served to users, leading to more clicks and, in turn, more conversions!

This part of your Google Ads audit process helps ensure no stone is left unturned. If you find that some assets still need to be created, don’t stress. This is an excellent opportunity to tick off some low-hanging fruit and improve your account’s performance.

 

Step 4: Review audience data

With Universal Analytics sunsetting last year, many audiences collected under UA are no longer usable. Therefore, you must have Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in place and collect data to effectively set up remarketing campaigns and gain insight into how your users behave after landing from your ad.

Furthermore, with the introduction of Google Analytics 4, you can now set up some pre-determined audiences, such as:

  • Likely 7-day churning purchasers
  • Likely 7-day churning users
  • Likely 7-day purchasers, plus a lot more!

 

Need support with GA4? Our Website Analytics and Tracking Services include GA4 setup and allow your business to unlock valuable insights about your website performance. Learn more today!

 

Step 5: Review search campaigns

Now, it’s time to dive into the account’s nitty-gritty (the fun part). For step five, you should examine your branded and non-branded search campaigns and look for areas of weakness and opportunity. For example, when I last ran an audit for one of our clients, I noticed that they were receiving branded terms in their non-branded campaign; from here, I was able to inform the client and recommend they allocate an additional budget for a branded campaign to capture this traffic at the lowest CPC while simultaneously protecting their brand from competitor bids.

Another red flag to check for within your accounts is duplicate keywords across multiple ad groups or campaigns. Having duplicate keywords means you are competing against yourself in auctions and paying a needlessly inflated CPC when, in reality, you could be paying far less.

So, a quick tip: if you do find duplicate keywords, analyze them to see which keyword has provided the best results. Allow the best-performing keyword to serve ads while the other duplicates are paused, resulting in better performance at a lower cost!

 

Step 6: Optimize Your Bid Adjustments

A good PPC manager won’t make major changes to an account every week but will continually refine a campaign to improve performance and ensure ads reach users at the right place and time. By optimizing bid adjustments across devices, the ad schedule ensures ads are served to users on the highest-converting device and during the highest-converting times of day, limiting wasted ad spending and maximizing conversions.

 

Start Your Google Ads Audit Today

You have a step-by-step guide on conducting a Google Ads audit to improve your Google Ads account and help maximize performance.

As you work through the process, you may find some areas this blog hasn’t touched on, but it should provide a solid understanding and foundation from which to work. Depending on your brand’s goals, this may be all the detail you need. Still, from experience, I have found that going into more detail can uncover advanced optimisations you can reevaluate after dealing with low-hanging fruits for quick wins.

 

Our Final Thoughts

  • When conducting a Google Ads audit, start with basic checks before exploring the advanced aspects of Google Ads.
  • Have a clear understanding of the business marketing objectives and expectations before analyzing the account.
  • Upon finishing the Google Ads audit, analyze all areas of weakness and prioritize what needs to be done first; dealing with the biggest problem will make your life much easier.

 

If you’re considering partnering with a PPC agency, click here to download our comprehensive guide on Choosing the best PPC agency and discover how outsourcing to a team of specialists translates into dominating search engine rankings.

 

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