How to do a PPC Audit

Pay-per-click is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. It’s cost-effective and can generate immediate results, making it a worthy option for businesses in all sectors.

To ensure you’re getting the most out of your advertising efforts, PPC audits are essential. They highlight any issues with your campaigns and help you refine your bidding strategy to maximise your budget.

However, if you go into an audit blind, you won’t know what you’re looking for and could miss critical issues that will impact your current – and future – campaigns.

With that in mind, we’ve put together the ultimate PPC audit checklist so you know exactly what you’re doing.

Let’s get straight to it.

Are PPC audits really necessary?

While paid search marketing can be a great way to reach new customers and drive brand visibility, the results can quickly go downhill if your campaigns aren’t optimised regularly.

Participating in PPC audits is one of the best ways to keep your campaigns running efficiently and ensure you gain as much value for your investment as possible.

With an audit, you can identify growth opportunities, determine if any existing ads need to be paused or optimised, evaluate wasted ad spend and obtain actionable data on focusing your efforts on improving overall performance.

It might seem tedious or intimidating, but PPC audits are worth the effort and usually result in better ROI for your business.

Which ad accounts should I audit?

There are so many ad platforms to choose between, and each has its benefits. The truth is, you should focus on your active accounts, as each requires investment and will offer results that ultimately define its success or failure.

Ad accounts that require audits include:

• Google Ads
• Bing Ads
• Facebook Ads

It’s also important to monitor different ad types – especially if you’re using Google. The Google search and display networks offer plenty of business opportunities, but a brief overview of your accounts won’t work.

Instead, you need to dive deep, and manually conduct a PPC audit. How? Here’s our insider’s guide to how to conduct a professional audit:

The PPC audit checklist

First things first, you should set a couple of days aside to run your PPC audit. The last thing you want is distractions during the audit, so make sure you have time to concentrate on the task.

Following this checklist step by step will ensure you get valuable data and actionable insights.

Review your account structure

A disorganised PPC account is like a messy work desk. You can’t find anything when you need it, and the clutter makes it hard to focus. We see messy accounts all the time, impacting the results you’ll get.

Campaign names

Each campaign should be set up and identified by a specific name. For example, if you’re advertising a particular product, that should be the name. It’s also important to separate campaigns by purpose, such as search and branded.

Ad groups

You should also ensure each ad group has a distinct keyword that explains its purpose because it makes it easier to find them.

Labels can also be beneficial for filtering, and eCommerce companies use them all the time – but they’re not essential.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics linking is relatively easy, but you should make sure your account is working correctly. You’ll need analytics for conversion tracking and can follow Google’s advice to link and unlink your account.

Evaluate your conversion tracking settings

Conversion tracking lets you look at how your ads perform in terms of whether viewers perform certain actions. For example, do they click the CTA or go to the landing pages from your ads?

More importantly, are you tracking conversions properly? You might think your ads are set up perfectly, but you could be missing valuable data.

It’s essential to look at your conversion tracking to see if there are any errors. Here’s what you should look for:

• Are there any inactive or unverified status notifications? (Use Google Tag Manager).
• Does your account have the right conversion tracking code? Your Ads account should link to Analytics, or you might miss conversions.
• Are you cleaning up your codes properly? If you don’t remove legacy tags, your conversions will be inaccurate.

Review your keyword research

Keywords are essential components of PPC advertising, and you should perform regular checks to ensure you’re using search terms that match your budget. However, it’s also important to review your negative keyword list regularly.

Quality score checks

Your keywords should have a quality score of at least 6-10. Many people stuff keywords into each ad, but relevancy is more important. For example, you could combine three or four generic keywords into one ad, but a directly related long-tail phrase will perform better.

Ad groups keyword research

Each Ad group should have between five and ten relevant keywords. If you add too many to the list, you’ll find it hard to track each ad and evaluate the conversions. Some of these keywords should also be long-tail terms, as they’ll attract a more specific audience and boost conversions.

Negative keywords

To get the most out of your positive keyword opportunities, you should have a list of negative keywords. These phrases ensure your ads won’t appear in irrelevant searches, which will keep your CPC down and generate more qualified leads.

Analysing your keywords will ensure you get the most out of your ad budget. You might find poor-performing keywords in your campaigns and be able to switch them for a more relevant keyword and refine your PPC strategy.

Analyse your ad copy

Your ad copy ultimately defines your success, even if you have the right keywords and conversion tracking codes. Your target audience won’t click on the ads or perform your desired action if the copy doesn’t compel them to do so.

Here’s what you should look for when analysing your advertising copy.

Watch out for generic ad copy

Whether using Google Ads, Bing or social media, your advert should speak directly to your target audience. Generic copy won’t compel people to take action, so identify the right tone of voice and make your words exciting.

Stop stuffing

Keyword stuffing might seem beneficial, but it can impact the quality of your content. Use your phrases wisely, and prioritise readability with each ad. It will make a massive difference to your conversions.

Keep it clean

All businesses need to remain professional at all times, and even the most minor errors can have a negative impact on your audience. Check your spelling and grammar before hitting the publish button, and remove jargon or terms that might be inappropriate.

Include images with your ads

Many consumers respond better to image ads than full text, so finding suitable graphics for your PPC campaign is crucial. Make sure they’re relevant to your brand and showcase your products through these adverts.

Review Google Ad rules

Google has numerous guidelines in place to ensure everyone has a safe experience. You should evaluate ad relevance, and ensure your ads meet the technical guidelines.

Never forget the CTA

That call to action button is so important to each advert, but most people use boring copy. Your CTA should compel users to follow your intended action, such as clicking on a landing page or signing up for a mailing list.

Check out your landing pages

If you have landing pages for your e-commerce store, check whether the products are still available and if the URLs are correct. You should also evaluate the copy and whether it’s having the desired effect on your audience.

Refine your bid strategy

A critical component of any PPC account audit is ensuring your bidding strategy works. Your bid strategy should reflect your budget and improve your chances of reaching each ad’s objectives.

Knowing when and where to make bid adjustments can improve your conversions and help you reach your goals.

You might find better keywords for your budget, or choose a specific strategy which corresponds with a particular goal. For example:

• Ad clicks and website traffic: CPC (cost per click) bids.
• Video ad views and actions: Cost per impression (usually 1000) or cost per view (CPV).
• Direct actions/conversions: Smart bidding

As your goals change with time, your bid strategy should evolve too. Over time, you’ll get used to changing campaign settings, but choosing the wrong bids for each ad could negatively affect all PPC campaigns.

Optimise Google Ads extensions

Google ad extensions boost your PPC ads by providing an opportunity to showcase additional information about your product or service and make it easier for people to find the answers they need.

With ad extensions, you can add additional links, display contact numbers and addresses, highlight special offers or promotions, list reviews from other customers and much more.

As a result of using Google Ads extensions, your ads become more engaging and stand out from the competition. With so many extensions to choose between, it’s hard to know which is best for your ad campaigns.

Choosing at least three of the following will make a significant difference to your PPC efforts:

Snippets

Snippets give audience members a sneak peek at your products or services in more detail and can improve click-through rates.

Sitelinks

Sitelinks can direct a viewer to various pages that enhance conversions, including testimonials, product pages, contact forms and much more.

Locations

A local audience might see your ads and decide to visit your physical store. Location extensions are ideal for these customers because they provide information about how to reach the store.

Lead forms

Lead forms are powerful conversion tools and help you capture important information from your audience members. For example, you could get people to fill in a form for their email addresses or provide their contact details to book an appointment.

Phone calls

Some people prefer to contact a company directly instead of going through your contact form; this is where phone call extensions come in. Viewers can click the phone number, and that’s still a conversion (make sure you track these calls).

These are just some of the available extensions, but there are others. Remember to ensure you don’t use too many, as one to three is enough for each advert’s goal.

Check if your ads have responsive features

People want a properly formatted landing page on their phones, which is why responsive PPC ads are becoming increasingly important.

Your ads should be tailored to desktop and mobile searches to ensure your target audience understands what you’re offering. Ad relevance is essential because people want to know what they’ll get if they click your ads.

When you plan properly, mobile responsive PPC ads offer valuable and relevant content that enhances user engagement and facilitates the buyer journey with no barriers.

Refine your audience and location targeting

If you’re driving and feel hungry, you wouldn’t continue aimlessly until you find a restaurant, would you? The sensible thing to do would be to use your satnav or Google Maps to find the closest place to eat.

Well, location targeting is similar to that scenario in many ways – as you can’t just publish your ads and hope that, at some point, the right audience finds them.

Targeting your ads is central to getting the most out of your ad budget, but many businesses fail to do it properly. Here are some of the most important factors to consider when planning where your ad will go:

Location targets

If you’re a local business, you don’t want your adverts to go to nationwide audiences (unless you offer delivery). At the same time, you might be expanding into a foreign market, so you’ll need to focus on specific countries.

It’s essential to make sure you pinpoint specific locations, so you can track conversions and ensure the right people view your ads.

Audience targeting

The last thing anyone wants is to cater to the wrong audience. An example of this would be a wool shop targeting all women instead of a specific demographic of women who would buy wool products.

Make sure you’re aiming your campaigns at the right audience, and always check to see whether a specific demographic responds more to your ads.

Device targeting

Depending on where your audience is most active, you can also tailor your campaigns to computers, tablets and mobile devices.

Ad scheduling

A proper audit can also reveal important information, including whether your audience is more active at a particular time of day. Delaying your text and video campaigns for a couple of hours might seem unimportant, but it significantly affects your conversion rates.

Most platforms have a schedule function, which means you can schedule the ads before releasing them.

Don’t forget ROAS & ROI

You put so much time and effort into your PPC campaign themes, ad groups, copy and everything else – but is it making a difference?

Every marketer knows the importance of analysing and reporting conversions, but businesses need to consider both ROAS AND ROI.

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

Return on ad spend measures how much revenue your online ads generate compared to how much you spend on them. Doing this gives you insights into performance, so you can make changes to increase the ROAS.

Return on investment (ROI)

Return on Investment helps you assess the success of campaigns and quantify whether you’re making a profit.

It’s vital in PPC as campaigns have set budgets. Measuring ROI helps determine if those budgets are being used proactively so businesses can create effective strategies for future campaigns.

By regularly auditing your accounts, you can check for any issues that impact your ROAS and ROI, ensuring you get the most out of your ad spend.

Unsure about doing a manual PPC audit? We’ve got you covered

Understanding how to conduct a PPC audit is challenging, and if you’re new to PPC it might be best to get a professional audit from an experienced team of professionals.

We provide in-depth audits for your advertising accounts, so you can understand what’s going on beneath the surface.

Once we discover how your ads perform, you’ll receive a detailed report and a phone call so you can action our recommendations.