Google Ads Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Boost ROI

A Google Ads audit is an in-depth review of your campaigns. It involves analyzing key elements like account structure and bidding strategies alongside performance metrics to uncover optimization opportunities.

Here, you’ll find 8 steps to perform a Google Ads audit:

1. Fine-tune your conversion tracking
2. Audit your account structure
3. Examine your keywords
4. Evaluate ad copy and creative elements
5. Optimize your landing pages
6. Review bid strategies and budget allocation
7. Conduct a competitive analysis
8. Incorporate GA4 audiences

How well is your Google Ads campaign performing?

Without an audit, you’ll never know for sure.

We spoke with HawkSEM co-founder and CEO Sam Yadegar about how to perform a thorough Google Ads audit that can help boost ROI.

Follow our audit checklist to easily optimize your campaign performance — without drowning in data.

What is a Google Ads audit?

A Google Ads audit is a comprehensive review of your Google Ads campaigns. The aim is to gather information to effectively optimize and enhance its performance.

An audit involves analyzing key elements, including:

• Account structure: Campaigns, ad groups, and keyword organization
• Keywords: Relevance, match types, and search intent
• Ad copy and creative: Messaging, calls-to-action, and testing strategy
• Conversions and tracking: Accuracy of goals, events, and attribution
• Bidding and budget: Strategies, allocation, and efficiency
• Audience targeting: Remarketing, GA4 audiences, and demographic segments

Typically, you will review or compare the above elements based on certain metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs).

Some of the most common metrics to explore in a Google Ads audit include:

• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate
• Cost per conversion
• Quality score
• Impression share
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Ad position

Why do Google Ads audits matter?

Google Ads audits help you identify actionable insights into your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing strategy and generate more ROI.

Here are some key reasons you should conduct regular Google Ads audits:

Offers actionable insights

Analyzing performance metrics like conversion rates and CTR helps uncover exactly what’s working and what’s not, offering a roadmap for immediate optimizations.

Keeps up with the shift toward AI and automation

From Smart Bidding and Performance Max to AI-generated assets, Google Ads is increasingly relying on automation. However, automation relies on accurate data, a strong account structure, and clear goals to be efficient, which an audit helps validate and optimize.

Aligns PPC campaigns with business goals

The audit process ensures your digital marketing goals support your larger business KPIs for a more focused ads strategy.

Minimizes wasted ad spend

By identifying underperforming ads and suggesting optimizations, audits help in reallocating resources more effectively.

Uncovers new opportunities

Whether through untapped keywords, emerging market trends, or innovative ad formats, audits can give you new ideas to reach your target audience more effectively.

How to do a Google Ads audit: 8 steps

Follow this step-by-step guide to conduct your next Google Ads audit.

1. Fine-tune your conversion tracking

Without accurate conversion tracking, you’re operating blindly and will be unable to gauge the effectiveness of your ads.

Here’s how to audit your conversion tracking setup:

Verify and validate conversion actions

• Make sure your Google Ads account is connected to your Google Analytics account
• Confirm that you’re tracking a range of conversion actions relevant to your business goals, such as purchases, sign-ups, leads, and phone calls
• Review the setup of your conversion tracking to ensure it’s correctly implemented across your website and landing pages
• Look for tracking pixels that might be missing or incorrectly placed

Use conversion data to drive your strategy

Use the conversion data you gather to identify which keywords, ad groups, and campaigns are delivering the most valuable actions.

This insight will be useful in the following steps and allows you to allocate your budget more effectively towards high-performing elements.

Further reading: How to Set Up Conversion Tracking for Google Ads: A Quick Guide

2. Audit your account structure

How you organize your account, campaigns, ad groups, and individual ads impacts your Quality Score, ad relevance, and overall performance.

Here’s how to effectively audit the organization of your account:

Evaluate campaigns and ad groups

Here are some things to consider when reviewing your campaign settings and ad groups:

• Do your campaigns align with your marketing objectives? For instance, you should have separate campaigns for different product lines, services, or business goals (such as brand awareness vs. lead generation).
• Are your ad groups tightly themed? Ad groups should be organized around a small set of closely related keywords. This allows for more targeted ad copy and landing pages.
• Is there overlap between ad groups or campaigns? Keyword overlap can lead to self-competition, driving up costs and diluting performance data.
• Do you have ten or fewer relevant keywords per ad group? Ad groups should contain a limited number of closely related keywords to maintain relevance and make ad copy and landing page alignment easier to manage.

Review keyword organization

Once you’ve assessed your campaigns and ad groups, determine if your keywords are organized in a way that supports relevance and control across the account.

Ask yourself:

• Are your keywords aligned with each ad group’s theme? Each ad group should contain only keywords that share the same intent and messaging.
• Have you included both broad and specific keywords? A mix of broad, phrase, and exact-match keywords can help control query matching while maintaining coverage across relevant searches.
• Are negative keywords used properly? Using a negative keyword list prevents overlap and helps maintain intent alignment.
• Are you using branded keywords? Branded keywords are where your paid search and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies come together.

Refine your account structure

Based on your findings, take steps to improve account organization and efficiency:

• Consolidate overlapping campaigns or ad groups
• Split large ad groups into smaller, more focused segments
• Regularly update keyword lists by adding new relevant keywords and removing low-performing or irrelevant ones
• Implement a consistent naming convention to make account management and reporting easier

Further reading: How to Structure Your Google Ads Campaign: 5 Success Secrets

3. Examine your keywords

Auditing your account structure ensures your keywords are organized correctly. However, this step focuses on how those keywords are actually performing.

To determine this, you need to review key metrics like CTR, conversion rate, CPC, and Quality Score alongside your chosen keywords to assess performance.

Here’s how:

• Review CTR and conversion rates: High CTRs indicate that keywords are relevant to your audience, while high conversion rates suggest that the traffic driven by these keywords is valuable. Identify which keywords are driving the most valuable actions.
• Evaluate Quality Scores: A high Quality Score means Google thinks your keyword is relevant to your ad and landing page. This often means lower costs and better ad positions.
• Review CPC: Understand which keywords are cost-effective and which are draining your budget.
• Dive into the Search Terms Report: Look beyond the keywords themselves to the queries they trigger. This will allow you to ensure the search intent is correct and that you’re reaching your target audience.
• Use performance data to refine your negative keyword strategy: This will help better qualify your clicks, reduce irrelevance, and keep queries from triggering ads in multiple groups.
• Check search term cross-pollination: Your ad groups should complement, not compete with, each other. Few queries should trigger multiple groups — this is especially true for branded keywords that may compete with general campaigns.
• Check keyword match types: Running too many broad match keywords can result in high ad spend on unqualified queries. For more qualified traffic, consider a mix of exact-match, phrase, and modified broad.

4. Evaluate ad copy and creative elements

With your keyword performance data in hand, review your ad copy and other creative elements (like images or video) to ensure your ads:

• Capture attention
• Communicate value clearly
• Stand out from the competition

Review copy for ad relevance and clarity

For relevant ads that are easy for users to understand, your copy should have the following elements:

• Value proposition: Your copy should clearly articulate your value proposition and align with the keywords in each ad group. It should answer the user’s query or offer a solution to their problem.
• Strong call-to-action (CTA): This should be compelling and direct, guiding users on what action you want them to take next. For example, learn more, sign up, get a quote, or make a purchase.

Test creative variations

Ensure your ads are fresh and enticing. Here are some ways to achieve that:

• A/B testing: Regularly test different headlines, descriptions, and display URLs to see what combinations perform best. Even small changes can significantly impact click-through and conversion rates. “[I like to test] offers, price points, call to action, emotional messaging vs. time sensitive, social proof,” says Yadegar.
• Use ad assets: Leverage assets (formerly ad extensions) to provide additional information and ways for users to interact with your ad, such as site links, callouts, structured snippets, and call extensions.

5. Optimize your landing pages

A well-optimized landing page can dramatically improve your conversion rates and overall campaign success.

Here are some best practices for a better user experience:

• Create a clear headline
• Use one CTA
• Ensure the design is intuitive
• Use simple forms
• Ensure ads and landing pages match
• Include social proof
• Use real photos over stock images
• Highlight your contact information
• Use PageSpeed Insights to check your page load time
• Check your page’s mobile responsiveness

Further reading: How to Do Landing Page Optimization Like a Pro: 15 Tips

6. Review bid strategies and budget allocation

Bids and budgets are essential parts of maximizing your Google Ads ROI.

It’s considered best practice to begin with manual bidding for more control and data accumulation. However, it’s often wise to shift toward a mix of manual and automated bidding over time.

Review your bid strategies

Review your current bid strategies to determine if they align with your campaign goals. Whether you’re using manual bidding, enhanced CPC, or automated bidding strategies like target CPA or ROAS, ensure they’re driving your desired outcomes.

If certain campaigns aren’t meeting expectations, test different strategies and make bid adjustments accordingly.

Further reading: 12 Google Ads Bidding Strategies (+ When to Use Each)

Optimize your budget allocation

Identify your most effective campaigns and consider reallocating your budget towards these ads. Invest more in what works and scale back on what doesn’t.

Beyond volume, consider the value of conversions. Prioritize campaigns that drive higher value actions or customers with a greater lifetime value.

Keep a close eye on your spending to make the most of opportunities to capture valuable traffic — without exceeding your budget.

7. Conduct a competitive analysis

A thorough competitive analysis provides insights into how you rank among your competitors and highlights opportunities for improvement.

• Use auction insights: Google Ads’ Auction Insights gives you data on how your campaigns rank against competitors for the same keywords. Pay attention to metrics like impression share, overlap rate, and outranking share.

• Identify challenges: Look for areas where competitors are outperforming you and identify why. This might reveal gaps in your keyword strategy, bidding approach, or ad copy that you can address.
• Identify strengths: In contrast, identify where you’re leading and double down on these campaigns. Use your strengths to further widen the gap between yourself and the competition.

8. Incorporate GA4 audiences

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) allows you to create highly targeted audiences based on user behavior, demographics, and conversion events — so once GA4 is linked, you can recreate your UA segments or leverage GA4’s predictive audiences.

Using these audiences helps improve targeting, increase relevancy, and reach users most likely to convert.

Further reading: What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4)? Key Features, Pros and Cons

When should I conduct a Google Ads audit?

If you’ve never conducted a Google Ads account audit before, now is the time to start.

After that, every quarter is an ideal cadence. This allows your campaigns to accumulate enough data to analyze Google Ads performance without missing optimization opportunities.

However, you should also perform an audit when you see changes you can’t explain:

“Consider doing a Google Ads audit when there’s fluctuation in performance, both good and bad,” says Yadegar.

“When things are bad, an audit can help uncover what’s wrong and help steer you in the right direction, but equally, when things are good, doing an audit helps capture those winning learnings that can help a campaign scale.”

What to do after a Google Ads audit

After the Google audit is complete, go through the report and develop an action plan to address any issues that were uncovered.

It can be helpful to create a doc of key takeaways and performance metrics, along with the strengths and weaknesses of your current Google Ads campaigns.

From there, you can plan a virtual meeting (if you work with a team) to discuss the key points and determine what actions to take and when.

Crucial issues discovered during your PPC audit should be addressed immediately, so your action plan should include prioritization to ensure that you do so optimally.

However, avoid making large structural or bidding changes all at once. Instead, test incrementally to isolate the impact.

The takeaway

Leaving your Google Ads account to run on automation and algorithms can result in leaving money on the table.

Audits can help you move to the next level of PPC marketing and greatly improve your sales and conversions.

Need help auditing and managing your PPC campaigns?

From search ads for SaaS to Shopping campaigns for ecommerce, HawkSEM is among the top 3% of marketing agencies in the country.

If you’re ready for higher-performing ads, reach out.

This article has been updated and was originally published in June 2022.