Google Ads Account Audit Checklist

PPC audits help you detect and resolve any issues that could be hampering the effectiveness of your ads. By conducting a Google Ads account audit, you can ensure that all campaigns are running properly and reaching their target audiences.

An audit of Google Ads should cover numerous areas. Here we’ll outline three of the key ones: Ad copy, keywords and Quality Scores.

1. Review your ad copy
An audit can offer valuable insights to enhance your return on investment and identify any weak points in your ad campaign that prevent it from producing maximum sales and brand recognition results.

Examine ad copy to ensure it includes relevant keywords and communicates a unique value proposition for your products or services. Also ensure ad extensions (such as location callouts promo and image ads ) are utilized effectively.

Verify ad keywords align with search intent. It’s vitally important that users see your ad if it matches up with their query, so be sure to ensure this is happening.

2. Review your keywords
Maintaining an annual review of keywords is crucial because their quality scores affect bids and ad ranks, while underperforming keywords could negatively affect your account as a whole.

Identification and suspension of keywords which have been spending your budget without returning any clicks or leads are particularly crucial for lead generation businesses, where every click counts.

Look at the search terms report to see if any keywords need to be added as negatives, which will prevent your ads from showing on searches that don’t match up with what your products or services have to offer.

3. Review your ads
Reviewing ad performance regularly is crucial for maintaining and expanding your Google Ads account’s health and success. Beyond making sure your ads comply with Google’s advertising policies, reviews can uncover new opportunities and increase return on investment.

Uncovering unhealthy keywords, ad groups, or campaigns is one of the easiest and most cost-efficient ways to cut unnecessary spending in your account and allocate budget towards more useful areas of it. Furthermore, reviewing keyword relationships between ads > landing pages could offer new strategies with reduced costs.

Be sure to frequently review your ad extensions in order to ensure they align with the theme of your campaign or ad group.

4. Review your landing pages
Auditing Google Ads accounts is an integral component of providing these services, whether taking over an account from another vendor or hiring new staff; an audit can reveal opportunities to increase audience reach while pinpointing areas for improvement and reveal any necessary modifications to reach more people with your message.

Reviewing landing pages is crucial as they have an effect on the performance and quality scores of ads. Make sure your landing pages are relevant to the keywords targeted and match searchers’ intent for improved user experience and conversion rates. Also ensure mobile optimization has taken place and install conversion tracking code into all landing pages.

5. Review your bids
Change history is an excellent place to begin when auditing a Google Ads account, giving an indication of what has changed recently in your account, and which changes have had the largest effect.

Reviewing bids is vitally important as it will allow you to ensure that your ads appear for competitive search terms while not paying for clicks that won’t lead to conversions.

Use Supermetrics’ free Google Sheets templates to quickly create an in-depth audit report and identify areas requiring improvement, providing data-backed recommendations to optimize your Google Ads account.

6. Review your AdWords account
No matter if you manage a Google Ads (formerly Adwords) account yourself, work with an agency, or oversee marketing teams – it’s easy to become bogged down in daily tasks and lose focus of what your campaign aims for. Auditing can help identify new opportunities for improvement while meeting your business objectives.

This checklist offers an exhaustive list of items to review; however, more complex accounts may require multiple passes through in order to catch everything. Use this as a starting point to assess your account and discover areas for improvement.