In the fast-paced world of PPC advertising, it’s important to regularly audit your Google Ads account to ensure it’s working properly and to identify areas for improvement. Whether your account’s performance has declined, you want to maximize conversions, or you simply want to do a regular check-in, conducting a thorough audit is essential.
In this article, we will explore seven effective ways to conduct Google Ads audits that will help you optimize your account and achieve better results.
The first step in any audit is to ensure proper conversion tracking. This involves checking if you trust your conversion data and looking for any untracked conversions on your website. By identifying data gaps and adjusting settings such as conversion counts and values, you can ensure accurate tracking and make informed decisions based on reliable data.
Next, evaluate your impression share to determine the percentage of times your ads were shown compared to how often they could have been displayed. By analyzing the reasons for lost impressions (budget or ad rank), you can make adjustments to increase your account’s effectiveness. This may involve optimizing your budget allocation, improving your bid strategy, or enhancing ad assets such as extensions.
Consistency is key when it comes to campaign settings. Check for any campaigns that differ from the others in terms of language, location, networks, time of day, or bid strategy type. While some variations may be intentional, it’s important to flag and follow up on any settings that seem out of place. Ensuring consistency will help you maintain control over your campaigns and avoid potential issues.
Match type usage is another aspect to consider during an audit. Evaluate the effectiveness of each match type and determine if any match types need to be removed or if bid strategies should be adjusted. By optimizing match types, you can improve the relevance and performance of your keywords.
Ad group organization plays a crucial role in the success of your campaigns. While ad group segmentation by match types or single keyword ad groups may no longer be relevant, it’s still important to maintain good ad to keyword relevancy at the ad group level. Review ad groups with below-average performance or a large number of keywords to identify areas for improvement. Ensure that the keywords and ad assets within each ad group properly relate to each other to maximize your click-through rates, Quality Scores, and conversion rates.
Consider the practice of RSA (Responsive Search Ads) pinning during your audit. Pinning assets can provide you with more control, help you overcome low data density issues, and facilitate ad testing. Assess if pinning is being used effectively in your account and suggest areas where more tests could be conducted to improve performance.
Finally, evaluate the change history of your account to determine if it’s actively being managed. Check how often changes are being made, especially in crucial areas such as bidding on branded keywords, adding negative keywords or search terms, and refining campaign settings. Regularly monitoring and making adjustments to your account will ensure its ongoing success.
While these seven steps provide a solid starting point for conducting a Google Ads audit, it’s important to remember that every account is unique and may require additional considerations. By regularly auditing your account and addressing any issues or areas for improvement, you can optimize your PPC efforts and achieve better results.
So, take the time to analyze your Google Ads account thoroughly. Trust your conversion data, evaluate impression share, ensure consistent campaign settings, optimize match type usage, organize your ad groups effectively, consider RSA pinning, and review the change history of your account. By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to maximizing the performance of your Google Ads campaigns and achieving your marketing goals.
