PPC Audit Checklist: A Guide to a Strategic Approach

When you put time, money, and effort into developing a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you want to make sure that it is beneficial for your business. A good PPC campaign will generate valuable results for your company. 

A PPC audit is the best way to figure out if your campaign is working. If you want to see results from a PPC audit, you should know how to do it right. To learn more, read this PPC audit checklist.

A well-executed campaign has a higher chance of being a success, which improves its chances of making money instead of wasting it. As a result, a campaign audit is needed. So, without further ado, let’s see how to do a PPC audit in 9 easy steps.

Setting the date range is the first step in creating a PPC audit. You need to make sure you have enough data to analyze.

You don't want to analyze a small set of data that only spans 30 days. This is not enough time to assess how well your changes are functioning. To make sure that you can accurately measure results over time, choose a wider set of data.

At the very least, you should examine three months' worth of data. This is enough data to figure out whether your tactics are working. To get a more clear overview of your campaign, you can also look at more data, but three months should be enough.

By logging into your Google Ads account, you can easily export your data. You can export all of your PPC account data, data from specific campaigns, or set custom exports.

If you run Bing ads, you should download the data for those ads as well, especially if you run the same ads on both platforms. 

It will help you gain a better understanding of the scope of your PPC efforts. You can download all this data into an Excel spreadsheet to help you organize it.

Make sure you know how much you're spending on each campaign when conducting your PPC audit. Keep track of that information so you can see how much you're spending to achieve the results you want for your campaign.

You should keep track of your cost-per-click (CPC) and the number of clicks you get for your budget. This is important information to have when planning your audit because it will help you determine how successful your campaign is.

The following items should be on the PPC audit checklist:

• Are Search and Display Campaigns with conversions losing Impression Share due to budget constraints?
  
• Do you have no active search ad groups with no conversions in the last 90 days?
  
• Do you have no active display ad groups and no conversions or view-through conversions in the last 90 days?
  

This is one of the few non-metric aspects of your PPC campaign that you should keep an eye on. It's essential to look at your ad content when analyzing your PPC campaign. Your ad content has a huge impact on how your target audience responds to it. 

First, make sure that your ad is aimed at a specific demographic. Check to make sure that your business services the regions that your account has decided to opt into. 

Then, go one step further and go over your geo-reports. You may discover that a specific area performs incredibly well or incredibly poorly and, can fine-tune the account to prioritize that location.

In addition, make sure your ad has a clear call-to-action (CTA). CTAs are useful for encouraging leads to convert. Make sure your ad copy includes a clear and effective call to action.

Make sure your keywords are integrated on your page when you evaluate your PPC ad. Make sure your keywords relate to your ad text if you want to increase the relevance of your ads.

Although broad-match keywords generate a lot of traffic, many of their impressions come from people searching for terms that are only loosely related to the business, resulting in disastrous click-through and conversion rates as well as low-Quality Scores.

One of the most important aspects of your PPC campaign is the quality score. The placement of your ad depends on both your quality score and your maximum bid. If you want to improve the placement of your ad, you must first improve your quality score. 

Your quality score is determined by factors such as ad relevancy and click-through rate (CTR). 

People are more likely to click on your ad if it is more relevant to their search query.

Pay close attention to your quality score when conducting your PPC audit. You must improve your quality score if it is low. Improving your quality score will boost the overall performance of your ad.

If you have a high-quality score for your keyword selection, you can keep up your practices to maintain your ranking.

Consider the following:

• All ad groups have 20 or fewer keywords.
  
• Each ad group has its negative keyword list.
  
• All ads have bids that are higher than the first page.
  
• All keywords have appropriate match types set.
  
• The overall average quality score for all keywords is above 7.
  

You should audit your keyword selection as part of your PPC audit. Keywords are the driving force behind the success of your PPC ad. You must select relevant keywords if you want to drive the right leads to your ad. 

The main thing is to focus on optimizing for long-tail keywords. These are keywords with three or more words.

Long-tail keywords help in driving more relevant leads to your page. If you are not currently using long-tail keywords in your campaign, now is the moment to get started. It will help you in developing a more effective marketing campaign for your business.

The click-through and conversion rate metric will be the next element on this PPC audit checklist. Your CTR will influence your conversion rate, so it's essential you take into account both.

CTR is an important factor in determining the success of your ad. It is crucial that you monitor your ad's CTR to determine whether or not people are interested in your ad. This metric indicates how many people see your ad in the search results and click on it.

If your CTR is low, you should reconsider your ad copy. A high CTR indicates that there is a lot of interest in your ad. It also implies that your PPC ad is relevant in the search results.

It's important to note, however, that having a high CTR isn't enough. A high CTR with a low conversion rate suggests that the information your audience sees in the search results is relevant, but your landing page isn't.

The main goal is to have a high CTR with a high conversion rate. This indicates that your ad is highly relevant to what users are looking for, and they are converting. Monitor both of these metrics combined to determine where you may be falling short.

Keep track of your bid amounts when running your PPC campaign. You should keep an eye on this figure to see how much you're spending to get leads for your business.

You should leave enough room for your business to profit. Evaluating your bid amount will help you figure out if you can lower your bid amount.

It's an effective way to help your business generate more leads. Don't waste money on ineffective locations, devices, or periods. 

• Adjust bids based on Geography.
  
• Adjust bids based on the Device.
  
• Make bid adjustments based on Time.
  

Make bid adjustments based on Topics & Interests, Gender, or Age.

Location analysis is an important tool for your PPC audit. Your PPC ads may appear in search results for different cities or states when you run them. This is especially true if you have a strong online presence and sell to people all over the world.

You can use location analysis to see where your ads perform best. Google Ads allows you to see which cities your ad appears in and how it appears in those cities. It's a great way to show you where you have a higher chance of generating business.

This allows you to see where you can increase your ad spending. If certain places are driving better results than others, you can spend more funds on ads in those places because you know you’ll get more with your return on investment.

You can move money around to get the best results for your advertising campaign with the help of location analysis.

If you're going to invest time and effort in various digital marketing strategies, you want to make sure it's money well spent. When your campaign isn't properly optimized, you risk wasting a lot of money.

The amount of money you lose from your Google Ads campaign is referred to as wasted spend. It identifies areas where you are losing conversions or spending too much money on lead generation.

One of the primary drivers is irrelevant keywords. Often, you'll optimize for great keywords, but other, irrelevant keywords will cause your ad to appear in the wrong search results. People who see your ad click on it only to discover that it is unrelated to their search.

Negative keywords can help to solve these issues. You can save money on advertising with this simple trick.

You spend more money on generating quality leads and helping your business in increasing conversions. You must audit your wasted spend if you want to run a successful campaign. You'll be able to see where you can improve your campaign to keep your business from losing more money.

There are various advantages to performing a PPC audit. When you put time and money into a campaign, you want to know if it's working. A PPC audit helps you to understand how your campaign is performing over time and how you may improve it.

You can discover performance issues.  To make sure that your campaign performs optimally, you should constantly monitor and update it. A PPC audit will assist you in identifying and fixing issues within your campaign.

PPC audits provide insight into the data which can help you see how your ad performs in comparison to your business competitors.

There is always room for improvement when running a digital marketing campaign. A PPC audit will show you where you can optimize your campaign's performance.

You can learn more about how your audience engages with your ads by conducting a PPC audit. You will learn what your audience likes about your ad and what aspects need to be improved to provide a better experience for them.

A PPC audit is essential for determining the success of your campaign. This PPC audit checklist includes nine steps that will help you accurately measure the results of your ad campaign and ensure that it is running properly. By following this checklist, you can make sure that your PPC campaign runs smoothly, increasing your chances of success and profit growth.