The future of B2B marketing is looking good because technology has enabled brands to reach larger audiences with ad campaigns. Today, businesses use Pay-Per-Click (PPC), a paid-marketing strategy to increase engagement and generate revenues. However, while this strategy remains effective, some important factors must be considered. One of them is performing a Google Ads audit to track the performance of a campaign and compare it with competitors.
Below is a comprehensive analysis of Google Ads audit and 8 simple ways to perform one.
What Does Google Ads Audit Mean?
Google Ads Audit (or PPC Audit or SEM Audit) is a thorough analysis and review of a brand’s PPC account. This strategy is effective in identifying areas of underperformance and mistakes in PPC campaigns and developing solutions. It is one of the core responsibilities of a PPC manager working with a new Google Ads account, and it needs to be done every 3 to 6 months.
What is the Importance of a PPC Audit?
PPC Audit shows insightful data that can be used to improve performance. It is also useful for setting bids, developing bidding strategies, and managing overall ad campaigns. If accurate results are generated from the audit, a business can decide whether to optimize its campaign for better ad ranking on search results.
8 Ways to Audit a Google Ads Account?
Without further ado, here is how to audit your Google ads account in 8 simple ways.
1. Review Business Goals
Reviewing business goals and objectives is one of the ways to begin a Google ads account audit. Every brand has its objectives, and it is a factor that directly influences how ad campaigns will be set. For instance, some businesses may require single or multiple conversion rates – the choice ultimately determines the outcome. These defined goals are also useful in tracking ad performance, sales, traffic, and traffic. And if, due to certain circumstances, the goal changes, adjustments can be made where necessary.
2. Lookup Ad Account Structure
Managing an ad account is a huge responsibility because it provides all the necessary data to review PPC performance. So, to audit effectively, you should review a brand’s ad account structure and adjust whatever needs to be. For instance, you can review the bids, budget, management, and control. While you do this, remember that your account’s health is the brainchild of any ad campaign’s performance.
3. Check Campaign and Account Settings
Apart from looking up the account structure, you should check out the campaign settings. Sometimes, advertisers or marketers may have made mistakes, such as disabling the conversion tracking feature, and now, it is affecting the ad’s performance. You should ensure this feature is enabled and consider separating the display and search campaigns. You should also ensure that the ad rotation is not set to “Rotate Indefinitely.”
4. Use Ad Extensions
Ad Extensions are also one useful way to perform a Google ads audit. Usually, more than 3 types of ad extensions are used in every campaign – anything lesser affects ad ranking. A few good examples are Callouts, Sitelinks, and Structured Snippets. You should consider using manual extensions to have full autonomy. And if you have automated options integrated with manual extensions, you should stop the former to allow the latter to work seamlessly.
5. Keywords
Keywords also play a significant role in Google ads account audit. And if you must do this, you must ensure no conflicting negative keywords to avoid losing impressions. You must also ensure proper formatting with the keyword match types – any error can affect the ad performance. Likewise, you should ensure that every ad group with a search term has active keywords but not too many because relevancy problems may occur.
Another thing you can do with keywords is to monitor search term reports. The report can be used to generate highly converted keywords for good ad copy for campaigns.
6. Build Negative Keywords List
As mentioned, building a negative keyword list and properly managing it is important. You can perform an audit accurately if your search ad campaigns use this special keyword.
7. Optimize Landing Pages
An optimized landing page is also a good parameter for auditing. So, if your website landing page doesn’t have a keyword-level url or secure url, it might not be easy to move forward.
8. Ads
Google ads campaign requires unique ad groups. It is a common Google ads strategy. The most important thing to consider here to perform an audit is to ensure that there are more than two active ads within ad groups. Also, all underperforming ads should be paused.
How Much Can Be Saved from Audits?
Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) determines an ad’s success. However, performing Google audits does save some money. It prevents your brand from spending constantly trying to improve its ranking.
A Quick Action Plan to Reduce CPA
A quick action plan to reduce Cost per Acquisition (CPA) is to revisit account structure and develop new bidding strategies.
Are Bids Impeding Conversions?
Yes, sometimes conversion rate depends on the bids.
How Can Brands Improve Quality Score?
1. Create a high-performing keywords list and build a negative keyword list
2. Develop new ad copies
3. Optimize the
What Can You Do After Having a High Converting Landing Page?
If you’ve developed a high-converting landing page, the next thing to do is create a strong ad copy with valuable keywords and other elements that can drive traffic.
How Can We Help?
Premia TNC is a leading consulting company committed to marketing solutions. We help our clients review their business goals and develop marketing strategies to ensure that you achieve them. One such is performing a Google Ads audit on their account to improve PPC performance. We save businesses the stress of going through each factor involved in ad campaign successes and take on that responsibility.
FAQs
Does Every Business Need a Google Ads Account Audit?
Yes, every business using a PPC marketing strategy needs to perform an audit regularly to improve ranking.
