10 Super-Simple Steps to Perform Your Own Google Ads Audit

Introduction to Google Ads Audits

Performing a Google Ads audit ensures your ad campaigns are optimized for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. It's essential to regularly check the performance metrics and make necessary adjustments. In this section, you'll learn why audits are vital and what key aspects to focus on.

Key Benefits of Performing a Google Ads Audit

• Improved ROI: Identify and fix issues that could be wasting your ad spend.
• Enhanced Targeting: Refine your audience targeting based on data analysis.
• Better Ad Quality: Ensure your ads meet quality standards and resonate with your audience.

What to Look For

• Keyword Performance: Evaluate which keywords are driving conversions.
• Ad Copy Effectiveness: Review the performance of different ad copies.
• Budget Allocation: Check if your budget is being spent effectively.
• Conversion Tracking: Ensure your conversion tracking is set up correctly.

By understanding these fundamentals, you can start your audit confidently.

Why Conduct a Google Ads Audit?

A Google Ads audit helps maximize your ad spend and improve performance. Here's why it's essential:

• Identify Waste: Detect where you're overspending or wasting budget.
• Improve Targeting: Refine your audience targeting for better results.
• Enhance Ad Quality: Ensure your ads are relevant and engaging.
• Optimize Bids: Adjust bidding strategies for higher ROI.
• Fix Errors: Catch and correct issues that might be harming your campaigns.
• Boost Conversions: Focus on tactics that drive more conversions.
• Stay Competitive: Keep up with competitors by regularly updating your strategies.

Conducting a Google Ads audit keeps your campaigns on track and effective.

Tools You Need for a Google Ads Audit

When performing a Google Ads audit, having the right tools is crucial:

1. Google Ads Account: Access your account to review all campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.
2. Google Analytics: Evaluate traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion tracking.
3. Google Tag Manager: Ensure all tags and triggers are properly set up.
4. Keyword Planner: Identify new keyword opportunities and assess current keyword performance.
5. Google Ads Editor: Make bulk edits to ads and manage campaigns more efficiently.
6. Third-Party Audit Tools:
   • SEMrush: Get in-depth analysis and competitor insights.
   • SpyFu: Uncover competitor strategies and find profitable keywords.
   • Optmyzr: Automate optimizations and improve ad performance.

These tools will help streamline your audit process and uncover essential insights.

Pre-Audit Preparation

Before diving into the audit, gather essential information and tools.

1. Gather Data: Ensure you have access to your Google Ads account, Google Analytics, and any relevant CRM systems.
2. Define Goals: Clearly outline what you aim to achieve with the audit. Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
3. Checklist: Create a detailed checklist of elements to review, such as keywords, ad copy, bidding strategies, and conversion tracking.
4. Tools: Familiarize yourself with Google Ads Editor, Google Analytics, and any third-party audit tools.
5. Historical Data: Download historical performance data to identify trends and anomalies.
6. Team Coordination: Inform relevant team members about the audit to facilitate smooth communication.

Step 1: Reviewing Account Structure

First, log in to your Google Ads account. Ensure that your account is organized to align with your business goals.

1. Campaigns:
   • Inspect the number of campaigns.
   • Verify if each campaign targets a specific product or service.
2. Ad Groups:
   • Check if ad groups are tightly themed.
   • Examine the number of ad groups per campaign; aim for 5-10.
3. Keywords:
   • Review keyword lists.
   • Ensure keywords are relevant and not overlapping among ad groups.
4. Ads:
   • Confirm multiple ads per ad group.
   • Test variations to see what performs best.

Consistent structure improves performance and easier analysis.

Step 2: Analyzing Campaign Settings

To analyze your campaign settings, follow these steps:

1. Review Networks: Check if your ads are running on the Google Search Network, Display Network, or both. Ensure this aligns with your goals.
2. Location Targeting: Verify that your ads target the intended geographical areas. Adjust as necessary to focus on high-performing regions.
3. Ad Schedule: Look at your ad schedule to see if your ads are running at optimal times. Update schedules based on performance data.
4. Bid Strategy: Evaluate your bid strategy settings. Confirm that they support your campaign objectives, be it conversions, clicks, or impression share.
5. Budget Allocation: Examine your daily and monthly budget. Reallocate funds to high-performing campaigns for better ROI.

Step 3: Assessing Keyword Performance

Reviewing the performance of your keywords is essential. Start by examining the search terms report.

1. Evaluate Search Query Relevance: Ensure the search terms triggering your ads align with your business goals.
2. Identify Negative Keywords: Use the search terms report to find and add negative keywords that are not driving valuable traffic.
3. Analyze Click-Through Rates (CTR): High CTRs indicate relevance. Low CTRs may suggest the need for ad or keyword adjustments.
4. Monitor Conversion Rates: Focus on keywords that drive conversions. Keywords with high costs but few conversions should be reconsidered.
5. Cost Per Conversion: Determine if the cost per conversion aligns with your budget. Optimize or pause underperforming keywords.

Regularly revisiting this process optimizes your campaign performance.

Step 4: Evaluating Ad Copy and Extensions

Evaluate your ad copy by focusing on these key areas:

1. Relevance: Ensure your ad text aligns with targeted keywords and user intent.
2. Clarity: Use clear, concise language that your audience will understand quickly.
3. CTA: Include a strong call-to-action to prompt user engagement.
4. A/B Testing: Check if multiple versions of ads are tested for performance.

Inspect your ad extensions:

• Sitelinks: Add navigational links to enhance user experience.
• Callouts: Highlight unique features or offers.
• Structured snippets: Provide additional context about your products/services.

Optimize both to improve click-through rates and ad visibility.

Step 5: Checking Bidding Strategies

Evaluate your current bidding strategies to determine if they align with your campaign goals.

• Manual CPC can give you control, but ensure you're not under- or over-bidding.
• Enhanced CPC might be beneficial if you want to keep manual control but leverage Google's machine learning.
• Target CPA is useful for driving conversions at a specified cost, but check if you're hitting your target.
• Maximize Clicks can increase traffic, yet it may not always drive quality leads.
• ROAS Bidding focuses on return on ad spend—critical if your goal is revenue generation.

Adjust strategies based on performance data.

Step 6: Analyzing Landing Pages

Your landing pages play a pivotal role in your Google Ads campaigns. Here's what you need to examine:

1. Relevance: Ensure the landing page matches the ad copy and keywords.
2. Quality: Check for professional design, engaging content, and high-quality images.
3. Load Speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test performance.
4. Mobile-Friendliness: Verify that your landing page is responsive on mobile devices.
5. Call-to-Action (CTA): Confirm clear, compelling CTAs that drive conversions.
6. Tracking: Implement analytics to monitor user behavior and conversions.

A well-optimized landing page can significantly boost your ad performance and ROI.

Step 7: Reviewing Ad Schedule and Delivery

Evaluate your ad scheduling to ensure ads are showing during peak times.

• Check Performance: Look at data to see which days and times yield the best results.
• Adjust Scheduling: Modify ad schedules to focus more on high-performing times.
• Ad Delivery Settings: Choose between Standard and Accelerated. Standard spreads your budget throughout the day, while Accelerated can spend it quickly.
• Time Zones: Ensure your account time zone matches your target audience's location.
• Special Events: Consider holidays or events that might impact ad performance.

Pro Tip: Regularly revisit and tweak these settings as your campaign evolves.

Step 8: Evaluating Audience Targeting

Evaluate who is seeing your ads and if they align with your target market.

1. Review Demographics:
   • Check age, gender, parental status, and household income to see if they match your ideal customer profile.
2. Analyze Interests:
   • Verify that the audience interests reflect what your potential buyers are genuinely interested in.
3. Look at Locations:
   • Ensure ads target the right geographical areas. Exclude regions with low performance.
4. Examine Device Usage:
   • Assess performance across devices (mobile, desktop, tablet), adjusting bids accordingly.
5. Check Custom Audiences:
   • Evaluate custom audience segments based on past interactions or purchase behavior.

Adjust targeting settings based on your findings to refine and optimize your campaign’s reach.

Step 9: Examining Conversion Tracking

Ensuring accurate conversion tracking is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns. Follow these steps:

1. Review Conversion Actions:
   • Navigate to the "Tools & Settings" menu and select "Conversions."
   • Verify all your desired conversion actions are listed.
2. Check Conversion Accuracy:
   • Confirm installed conversion tracking codes on your website for each action.
   • Use Google's Tag Assistant to verify tags are firing correctly.
3. Analyze Conversion Data:
   • Look at campaign-level and ad group-level conversion data.
   • Identify trends or discrepancies needing attention.
4. Adjust Based on Insights:
   • Optimize underperforming campaigns or ad groups.
   • Revisit your bid strategies and budget allocations.

Step 10: Ensuring Compliance with Best Practices

During your Google Ads audit, you must ensure adherence to best practices to optimize performance:

• Ad Policies: Verify all ads comply with Google’s advertising policies to avoid disapprovals.
• Quality Score: Maintain high-quality scores by focusing on relevance, keywords, and landing page experience.
• Ad Extensions: Utilize all relevant ad extensions to improve visibility and CTR.
• Conversion Tracking: Implement accurate conversion tracking to measure performance and ROI.
• Bid Strategies: Ensure your bidding strategies align with campaign goals.
• Ad Rotation: Set ad rotation for optimizing clicks based on performance data.

Following these steps ensures your ads meet standards and deliver optimal results.

Post-Audit Action Plan

After completing your Google Ads audit, it's crucial to implement changes for optimization. Here's a step-by-step action plan to guide you:

1. Identify Weak Spots: Pinpoint areas that underperform, such as low CTR keywords or high CPC campaigns.
2. Set Priorities: Rank issues based on impact and ease of implementation. Focus on high-impact, quick fixes first.
3. Update Ad Copy: Revamp underperforming ad texts. Test new variations to improve relevance and engagement.
4. Adjust Bids: Optimize bids based on performance data. Reduce bids for low ROI keywords; increase for high performers.
5. Refine Keywords: Add negative keywords to eliminate wasteful spend. Enhance targeting with long-tail keywords.
6. Monitor & Iterate: Regularly review performance metrics post-implementation. Make iterative changes for continuous improvement.

Conclusion and Next Steps

By now, you should have a clear understanding of your Google Ads performance and areas needing improvement. To keep momentum:

1. Document Findings: Create a summary report of your audit findings and insights.
2. Action Plan: Develop a detailed action plan with deadlines for addressing each issue.
3. Implementation: Start executing your action plan, prioritizing high-impact changes first.
4. Monitoring: Regularly monitor performance metrics to track the effectiveness of your adjustments.
5. Ongoing Audits: Schedule routine audits to ensure ads stay optimized.
6. Stay Informed: Keep up-to-date with Google Ads updates and best practices.

Consistent auditing and optimization will drive better results for your campaigns.