Wasted ad spend, poor targeting and missing tracking are just a few issues that can hurt Google Ads performance. The problem is these issues aren’t obvious at first glance. That’s where a Google Ads audit comes in.
Think of it as a health check for your online advertising, a way to diagnose what’s working, what’s not, and how to optimize for maximum impact. A well-executed audit can lead to a significant boost in your campaign performance, attract higher-quality leads, and streamline your campaign efficiency, saving you both time and money.
There are benefits to hiring a professional to audit your Google Ads account on occasion. However, you can audit it yourself much more frequently allowing you to catch problems sooner.
The Importance of a Google Ads Audit
Regular audits ensure your campaigns stay aligned with best practices and adapt to the never ending changes in Google Ads. Audits can also help you identify and troubleshoot why you’re experiencing poor campaign performance, struggling to scale, or dealing with low-quality leads. Regular reviews during optimizations often won’t uncover larger issues in your account the way that a comprehensive audit will. That’s why I run a self-audit on the accounts I manage at least once per quarter. Focused, comprehensive audits will help you identify problems or opportunities you might otherwise miss.
Key Areas to Focus on During Your Audit
Tracking & Settings
The first place I start with any audit in a Google Ads account is reviewing the tracking and account settings. This is the foundation and problems here can ripple throughout the account. Start by reviewing your account conversion tracking and asking these questions.
- Does my conversion tracking accurately reflect business goals?
- Can I refine what conversions I’m tracking to capture more valuable actions?
- Am I tracking any conversions twice and inflating my conversion metrics?
Next I move over to reviewing the account budget and ask these questions.
- What’s an adequate budget to reach the accounts goals?
- Is the budget spread too thin and impacting performance? You want enough budget to get at least 10 clicks per day per campaign.
- Are there opportunities for strategic adjustments to make the budget more efficient?
Finally, I double check all account settings to make sure there aren’t any surprises that might impact performance.
- Turn off auto applied recommendations.
- Turn off automatically created assets.
- Avoid display expansion in search campaigns.
- Double check location settings and matched locations.
Account Structure
When I’m reviewing an account set up, I try not to judge it based on right or wrong. There are lots of ways to set up Google Ads campaigns and many things work for one business and not for another. The goal of reviewing the account structure should be to identify opportunities for improvement and remove anything that’s not working.
- Make sure your account takes into account the business goals. Are the highest priority products or services highlighted? Are you capturing demand or trying to generate it? Make sure the right campaign types are used for each of those goals.
- Double check your campaign settings to make sure you’re targeting the right locations and using the correct ad schedules. Double check that nothing has changed with your business that needs to be updated. If search partners are enabled double check performance to make sure it’s meeting your goals.
- A lot of campaigns end up overly segmented with a never ending list of ad groups and keywords. Google Ads needs high quality data to optimize campaigns and too much segmentation can impact this. If there are opportunities to combine campaigns or ad groups consider how that might help the account.
Performance Trend Review
You can learn a lot about your account by thoroughly reviewing your performance trends. You’ll find things that are working well and others that are no longer effective. The goal should be to review performance trends in a variety of ways to identify opportunities and problems.
- Analyze data across devices, audiences, locations, and ad schedules. What’s driving results and where is spend being wasted?
- Review trends over 7 days, 30 days, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year. Did something that was working stop? How come? Are there any new opportunities that have emerged?
- Don’t forget to review your landing pages. Ensure they’re providing a seamless and conversion-friendly experience that matches users expectations.
Reviewing Keywords, Ads & Bidding
Next you can finally move into the nitty gritty of the account by reviewing keywords, ads and bidding. This is where a lot of time and energy is already focused on the account. So, the goal with an audit should be to look at things in ways you normally wouldn’t.
- Starting with keywords, review performance over a variety of time frames. Are there keywords that aren’t converting or haven’t served in more than 3 months? One rule of thumb I use is pausing a keyword if it hasn’t converted after 100 clicks. Low search volume keywords that aren’t getting impressions can be paused as well.
- Next review your ad performance and determine are your ads resonating with your audience? Is your click through rate trending up or down? Is everything accurate and are the landing pages still the correct ones? Are there any signs of a disconnect such as a high click through rate, but a low conversion rate?
- Finally, take a close look at your bidding strategy. You’re probably making frequent adjustments here so step back and ask is this bidding strategy the most effective for me? Maybe you need to move from click based bidding to conversion based bidding. Or perhaps a move from conversion bidding to conversion value bidding would make a big impact (check out this blog post on that change here). Try to be really objective in considering what’s best for the account.
As you go through auditing your account, the goal should be to review everything as if you were a 3rd party who is not connected to the account. Try to take any emotional attachment out of the process. Those keywords you were convinced were going to work that haven’t converted yet? Pause them. That campaign that was crushing it a year ago, but is a shell of itself now. It’s time to restructure it. This isn’t easy to do because we all get attached to our ideas, but that can really hold campaigns back.
Next Steps
Whether you’re managing an account yourself or have an agency doing it for you, I encourage everyone to take time to do a self audit. That’s why we’ve created a completely free 5-day email course that walks you through how to do it. Each day, you’ll receive a focused lesson that breaks down the audit process into manageable steps, empowering you to identify hidden opportunities and take control of your campaigns. This course saves you the time and frustration of navigating Google Ads optimization alone.
For those seeking a more hands-off approach or a personalized, in-depth analysis, we also offer professional audit services. But to start, join our free 5-day email course today and transform your Google Ads performance.
Ready to take control of your Google Ads performance and stop wasting valuable ad spend? Don’t let another day pass with underperforming campaigns. Sign up for our free 5-day email course and gain the knowledge and skills you need to conduct a comprehensive audit. You’ll receive daily, actionable steps directly to your inbox, guiding you through the process. Click here to sign up and start your journey towards Google Ads success!