We'll show you how to conduct your own Google Ads audit or take us up on our offer of us deep diving into areas of your Google Ads that you didn't even know existed, carried out by a seasoned PPC professional. We’ll produce an easy to understand report with actionable recommendations as well as scoring your campaigns out of 100.
A good campaign structure lays the foundation for success. Here’s what to look for:
Campaign Objectives: Is your campaign tailored for a specific goal like brand awareness or conversions? If they're not, your campaign can easily become unravelled and too broad to achieve your goals. This can lead to irrelevant search terms, low click volume, a high cost per conversion or no conversions at all! Make sure you check your campaign settings for your objective before aligning your keywords and search ads to your goal.
Campaign Type: Are you using the right campaign type for your service or product? Let's say you have an online shop but you are using a standard search campaign, this may not be the best campaign type for your business. Instead, you could look at using shopping or display campaigns to visually showcase your product.
Budget Allocation: Ensure the budget aligns with each campaign’s objective. For example, it is best practice to allocate a higher budget to a conversion campaign as opposed to a brand awareness campaign as this may not yield results. Additionally, ensure that you have enough budget to meet the first page keyword bid without restricting the number of clicks you can receive.
URL Tracking: Verify that all tracking URLs are set up and functioning correctly on both desktop and mobile devices.
Example:
A retail company allocated the same budget to their conversion-focused and brand awareness campaigns. After identifying this discrepancy, they shifted the budget to match each campaign's priority, improving their return on investment (ROI).
Your keywords are at the heart of your campaigns and will determine what search terms your ads show for. Conduct a thorough review:
Relevant Keywords: Review the keywords that you are targeting and ensure that they are relevant to your offering and have intent behind them. For example, if your campaign goal is to generate leads, avoid using research-based keywords as these do not indicate that the user is ready to convert.
Analyze your keywords, focusing on which ones are generating conversions and which ones aren't. Once you have this information, ask yourself if there are any keywords you should pause.
Match Types: Check for an overreliance on broad match, which may lead to wasted ad spend and generate irrelevant search terms. Consider using exact and phrase match keywords.
Negative Keywords: Regularly review the search terms report and filter out irrelevant search terms that drain your budget by adding them to a negative keyword list. Moreover, review the negative keywords that are already in place and ensure that they are not conflicting with your keywords.
Competitive Keywords: Monitor your bids for high-intent keywords. If your keywords are below the first page bid, consider making a bid adjustment to stay competitive if your budget allows it.
Example:
A travel agency used "all-inclusive resort" as a broad match keyword but attracted searches for "all-inclusive resort jobs." Adding “jobs” as a negative keyword saved them hundreds in wasted clicks.
Your PPC account structure is extremely important to ensure that the campaign can be managed appropriately and your targeting is specific. Organize your ad groups and ensure your copy is compelling:
Ad Group Themes: Group keywords around tightly-knit themes to increase relevance. However, you need to ensure that you do not have too many ad groups as this can make your PPC campaigns difficult to manage.
A/B Testing: Run A/B tests on CTAs, ad copy, and landing pages within your search ads. You can also experiment with different ad types, including call-only ads, video ads and YouTube ads. This will allow you to conclude which ads perform best with your target audience.
Ad Relevance: Review your ad copy, ensuring that it is compelling, relevant to your target keywords, and includes USPs and CTAs.
Landing Page Cohesiveness: Ensure the ad and landing page are consistent. Landing page quality cannot be overlooked and is just as important as your Google Ads campaign. When reviewing the landing page, ensure that it is clear and concise throughout, has relevant CTAs and USPs to prompt the user to convert.
Example:
A financial service grouped its ads around specific products but found customers weren't converting. A/B testing revealed the CTAs were too general. They refined the CTAs to be specific to each product, improving click-through rates by 20%.
Connecting your Google Analytics account is crucial to ensure that your conversions can be reported within Google Ads, you can then use this data to make informed optimisation.
Migrate from Universal Analytics: If you haven’t switched to GA4, you’re missing critical insights. Universal Analytics stopped collecting data in July 2023 and as of the 1st of July 2024, you cannot view your historical data, therefore, you must switch to Google Analytics 4 to continuously collect conversion data. After you have migrated, you need to connect your Google Analytics account to Google Ads so you can see the data here.
Set up Conversion Tracking: Functional conversion tracking is essential for any Google Ads campaign as it allows the advertiser to review what elements of the campaign are generating conversions and optimise underperforming areas.
Predictive Audiences: Utilize GA4's predictive capabilities to identify potential purchasers or converters.
Custom Audiences: Build segments based on customer behaviour.
Example:
An online retailer created a GA4 audience targeting “likely 7-day purchasers,” then crafted tailored ads for this group. The result was a 30% increase in conversion rates.
People engage with your ads differently across devices and networks:
Device Segmentation: Adjust your bids based on which devices drive conversions. Mobile may be better for discovery, while desktop might drive final purchases.
Network Settings: Within your campaign settings, you can enable the Search Network and Display Network. These networks can lead to high ad spend with little to no conversions, so it is important to review them.
Example:
A B2B software company noticed mobile users often left the checkout page. They improved the mobile experience, leading to a 15% increase in mobile conversions.
Product data feeds are crucial for Google Shopping Ads:
Link Google Merchant Center: To run shopping ads, you need to link your Google Merchant Center account to Google Ads so that you can pull the shopping feed through to the Google Ads account.
Titles and Descriptions: Make sure they contain high-quality keywords and relevant details.
Inventory Levels: Ensure inventory is up-to-date to avoid advertising out-of-stock items.
Merchant Center Errors: Fix data errors to improve product visibility.
Example:
An electronics retailer updated its inventory feed to direct users from out-of-stock items to alternative products, leading to a 25% increase in Shopping Ads conversions.
Stay ahead by understanding your competition and protecting your brand:
Auction Insights: Identify your competitors' impression share and overlap rate. This will help you understand how far your budget is going and if you need to increase it or make bid adjustments on your keywords.
Branded Keywords: Bid on brand terms, including misspelt ones.
Negative Keywords: Prevent cannibalization between branded and general campaigns by fine-tuning your negative keyword list or creating individual ones for separate campaigns.
Example:
A software firm noticed a competitor outbidding them on their branded keywords. They increased bids and adjusted ad copy to highlight unique features, reclaiming impression share.
Test automated and manual bidding to optimize your campaigns:
Manual vs. Automated Bidding: Test different strategies based on campaign goals. It is best practice to start your campaign with a manual bidding strategy, however, as you start to collect data, you may find that an automated bidding strategy drives better results after experimentation.
Dayparting: Adjust bids based on when your audience is most active.
Bid Adjustments: Tweak bids according to location, devices, or audience lists.Is your Google Ads campaign falling short of your expectations? Are you tired of wasting your ad spend on underperforming campaigns? You're not alone, and it may be time to get a second opinion from an expert PPC agency.
Discover what elements of your campaign are utilising your budget and not delivering results such as poor keyword match types or low ad relevance. By identifying and optimising these areas, you are ensuring that your budget is going to the best-performing elements of your PPC campaigns, giving you a higher return for your ad spend and reducing wasted spend.
Identify opportunities to optimise specific areas of your Google Ads account, this could be from segmenting a campaign into ad groups for more granular targeting to improving your search ads. It is imperative to review each area of the account to improve Google Ads performance.
Are your campaigns setup to meet your objectives? We'll look in detail at every aspect of your campaign structure and configuration, no stone unturned! We'll detail aspects of your campaign configuration that can be improved. Any misconfiguration in Google Ads will reflect in wasted ad spend.
Once we've completed the audit of your Google Ads campaigns, we'll present this in an easy to understand report, whereby we use a traffic light system to show you areas that require immediate attention, and those that are working well for you. For a quick snapshot of how your Google Ads are performing, we provide an overall score out of 100. Additionally, we're always on hand to have a call or Google Meet to walk you through the audit.
A Google Ads audit is an in-depth evaluation of your Google Ads campaigns. During a Google Ads review, we will delve into specific sections of your campaign including the ad groups, ad copy, conversion tracking and areas of Google Ads that you didn't even know that existed.
Advertisers can often find themselves looking at a Google Ads campaign with tunnel vision, especially if they have been running it for a while. This can lead to misconfigurations being overlooked and a lack of regular optimisation. Fortunately, having a Google Ads account audit can identify opportunities for improvement and provide actionable solutions.
If you feel like you should be getting more from your Google Ads or your current Google Ads manager isn't reporting frequently, then this is a prime opportunity to have another pair of eyes verify the configuration and performance of your campaign.
To effectively complete a PPC audit, it is important to dissect the campaign and review specific sections in detail, including but not limited to the ad groups, ad copy, landing pages and conversion tracking. Uncover the truth with a Google Ads audit and learn how to optimise your PPC campaigns to maximise your results.
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It's advisable to conduct a thorough audit at least every quarter or whenever you notice performance dips.
Branded campaigns focus on keywords directly related to your business name, while non-branded campaigns target broader industry terms.
Automated bidding can save time and optimise results but isn’t suitable for all campaigns. It is best practise to test a smart bidding strategy before switching to it.
High impressions and low clicks or conversions are red flags. Monitor your Quality Score and conversion rates to spot inefficiencies. If your ad spend is high and you're not receiving enough leads or sales to meet your objectives, this is often a sign of wasted ad spend.
Serious consideration needs to be taken when deciding whether to apply a Google recommendation or not. Whilst some recommendations are perfectly valid and will indeed improve your campaign performance, there are some that will be detrimental. The general opinion from our PPC managers is that any inbound call from Google, whereby they're offering an optimisation or strategy call should be avoided, due to the low quality of recommendations and lack of accountability thereafter.
Your Google Ads Customer ID is in the top right when logged into Google Ads. It's a 10 digit number seperated by dashes such as xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Firstly login to your Google Ads account at www.google.co.uk/ads. On the left hand menu bar, hover over admin - on the flyout menu select Access and Security. On the next page select the Managers tab. From here you'll be able to accept or deline a Google Ads link request.
Our free Google Ads Audit includes checks to ensure your Google Ads are performing at their best. Our detailed PPC review will focus on areas of improvement, identify where wastage is occurring and provide detailed information about campaign structure, configuration, conversion tracking, keyword usage, ad texts, bid adjustments and more!
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