PPC Audit: Definition, Template & Step-by-Step Guide

A PPC audit is an indispensable tool for any business seeking to maximize the impact of its pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. It involves a deep dive into campaigns, uncovering areas for improvement, and ensuring that ad spending delivers the highest possible return on investment (ROI)

Are you tired of potentially wasting your PPC budget? WebFX data shows that small and mid-sized businesses spend an average of $9,000–$10,000 monthly on PPC campaigns. Maximize your return on investment with a PPC audit, thanks to which you can identify areas for improvement and get the most out of your ad spend.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a PPC newcomer, this comprehensive guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools to navigate the auditing process confidently. We’ll delve into the core elements of a PPC audit, providing a practical framework to streamline your analysis. We’ll also walk you through a detailed, step-by-step approach that empowers you to identify inefficiencies, pinpoint optimization opportunities, and elevate your PPC campaign performance to achieve your marketing goals.

Adopting the insights from a PPC audit can transform your advertising efforts. Imagine a scenario where every click translates into a valuable lead or customer – that’s the power of a well-optimized PPC campaign. Leverage this guide as your roadmap to achieving PPC success.

What Is PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising Audit?

A PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising audit is a comprehensive review and analysis of a business‘s PPC campaigns to evaluate their performance, effectiveness, and ROI (return on investment). This aims to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the current PPC strategy. By thoroughly examining elements such as keyword selection, ad copy, landing pages, bid management, and overall campaign structure, the audit provides actionable insights to optimize ad performance and reduce wasted spend.

Conducting a PPC audit involves analyzing various metrics, such as click-through rates (CTR), cost per click (CPC), conversion rates, and quality scores. It also includes assessing the relevance and performance of keywords, evaluating the effectiveness of ad copy, and ensuring that landing pages are optimized for conversions.

By pinpointing areas that require improvement and implementing recommended changes, businesses can enhance their PPC campaigns, improve their ad positioning, and ultimately achieve better results from their advertising efforts. The importance of PPC audits refers to the 5 following elements:

1. Improving ROI – by identifying and eliminating wasted spend on non-performing keywords or ineffective ads, a PPC audit helps improve ROI of advertising campaigns.
2. Enhancing ad performance – regular audits provide insights into which elements of the campaign are working well and which are not, allowing for continuous optimization and better overall performance.
3. Adapting to market changes – the digital advertising landscape is constantly changing, and a PPC audit helps businesses stay up-to-date with the latest trends, platform updates, and competitive dynamics.
4. Quality Score improvement – audits help identify areas that need improvement to boost the Quality Score, such as ad relevance and landing page experience, which results in better ad positions at lower costs.
5. Ensuring strategic alignment – audits ensure that PPC campaigns are aligned with business goals and marketing strategies, providing a clear path to achieving desired outcomes.

What Is the Purpose of PPC Audit?

The purpose of a PPC audit is to evaluate and optimize PPC campaigns to ensure they are performing effectively and delivering the best possible ROI. A PPC audit identifies room for improvement and growth opportunities and ensures your campaigns are aligned with business objectives. Check out the specific goals of conducting a PPC audit with explanations below:

• Enhancing campaign performance – the primary goal is to improve the overall performance of PPC campaigns by analyzing and optimizing key components such as keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and bid strategies. This increases click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and overall ROI.
• Reducing wasted spend – a PPC audit aims to identify and eliminate areas where advertising spending is wasted by finding underperforming keywords, irrelevant ads, and inefficient bid strategies that do not contribute to campaign goals.
• Improving Quality Scores – audit helps improve quality scores by optimizing ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR. Higher quality scores lead to better ad placements and lower costs per click (CPC).
• Optimizing budget allocation – the audit reviews how the budget is distributed across campaigns and ad groups, ensuring that funds are allocated to the highest-performing areas. This ensures that the budget is used efficiently to maximize ROI.
• Ensuring strategic alignment – it ensures that PPC campaigns are aligned with broader business and marketing objectives. This alignment helps achieve specific business goals, such as increasing sales, generating leads, or boosting brand awareness.
• Adapting to market changes – the audit helps adapt to market changes, such as shifts in consumer behavior, new competitor strategies, or updates in PPC platforms. Staying current with these changes ensures that campaigns remain effective.

Conducting a PPC audit offers businesses several advantages, including increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved competitive positioning. By analyzing PPC campaigns, businesses can identify and rectify inefficiencies, reduce unnecessary expenses, and maintain a competitive edge.

The outcomes of a PPC audit are equally compelling, involving the following:

• Actionable insights – provide clear guidance on improving keywords, landing pages, and campaign structure.
• Higher quality leads – make PPC campaigns attract the right audience with refined targeting and ad content.
• Continuous improvement – ensure ongoing campaign optimization and performance gains.
• Strategic agility – audit insights help to adapt your PPC strategy to market shifts and evolving business goals.

What Should I Include in PPC Audit?

A PPC audit should include a comprehensive evaluation of your campaign structure, focusing on keyword performance, ad copy effectiveness, and landing page optimization. To optimize campaign performance, you must delve into key metrics like click-through rates, cost per click, conversion rates, and return on investment. This analysis helps ensure your resources are used efficiently.

You’ll also need to review bid strategies, budget allocation, and targeting settings to identify any areas for improvement. Quality scores should be examined to pinpoint opportunities for further optimization. Finally, a well-organized account structure aligned with your business goals is essential. Regularly revisiting and refining these elements is crucial to maintaining peak campaign performance.

12 Steps to Conducting a Complete PPC Audit

To conduct a complete PPC audit, start by defining your goals and objectives, focus on gathering data, and deeply evaluate each strategic element of your campaign. Check the detailed 12-step guide below to learn how to analyze data properly and find out what to pay attention to during your PPC audit.

Step 1: Define Goals and Objectives

Firstly, define your campaign goals and overall marketing strategy objectives. Before you delve into the details of your PPC campaigns, it’s important to establish a solid foundation. This starts with clearly understanding your overarching marketing strategy objectives and how your PPC campaigns contribute to them. Consider if you aim to drive a surge in sales, cultivate a steady stream of qualified leads, or elevate your brand recognition. Defining these primary goals is a compass throughout the audit process, ensuring every step serves a specific purpose aligned with the bigger picture.

By defining your campaign objectives, you can adjust your audit to identify the areas with the greatest impact on your goals. For instance, if your focus is on lead generation, the audit will prioritize analyzing the effectiveness of landing pages, conversion tracking, and keyword selection in attracting potential customers. In contrast, an audit focused on brand awareness might delve deeper into ad copy creativity, audience targeting strategies, and brand sentiment analysis.

Ultimately, aligning your PPC campaign goals with your overall marketing strategy ensures a cohesive approach, maximizes return on investment, and steers your campaigns toward achieving measurable success.

Step 2: Dive into Performance Metrics

Secondly, dive into performance metrics. Following the establishment of clear campaign goals, the next step delves into the heart of your PPC campaigns – their performance. A meticulous data collection process is paramount to understanding how your campaigns are currently operating. This includes extracting all relevant data points from the PPC platform, including performance metrics and historical data.

The data you are looking for includes various indicators showing the campaign’s strengths and weaknesses. KPIs such as click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), conversion rate, and return on investment (ROI) serve as the bedrock of our analysis, allowing you to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of your campaigns in attracting qualified traffic and achieving your desired outcomes.

Furthermore, historical data plays a vital role in this process. Analyzing trends over time can uncover patterns and seasonality that might influence campaign performance. This historical context allows you to make informed decisions about future optimizations and adjustments.

Step 3: Analyze Campaign Structure

Thirdly, analyze the campaign structure. Having discovered the performance landscape through meticulous data collection, now turn your attention to the basic architecture of your PPC campaign. Review the overall organization of your PPC account. Check the hierarchy of campaigns, ad groups, and keywords to ensure they are logically structured and aligned with your goals. This analysis focuses on the organizational framework of your account, encompassing the hierarchy of campaigns, ad groups, and the keywords housed within them.

A meticulously crafted campaign structure is the foundation for efficient campaign management and optimal performance. You should thoroughly review this structure to ensure it aligns seamlessly with your goals and objectives. Ideally, the organization should exhibit a logical flow, with campaigns categorized into distinct elements by product lines, target audiences, or marketing objectives.

Within each campaign, you must analyze the organization of ad groups. Ad groups should function as thematic clusters, containing keywords that share a tight semantic core and reflect a singular user intent. This ensures that your ads displayed are highly relevant to the specific search queries being triggered by those keywords. Then, you should examine the selection of keywords within each ad group. Assess keyword relevance, ensuring they accurately reflect your products or services and resonate with your target audience’s search intent. Review the utilization of match types (broad, phrase, exact) to optimize your reach and control the search queries triggering your ads.

By meticulously analyzing the campaign structure, you can identify potential areas for improvement. This might involve restructuring campaigns for better alignment, consolidating or refining ad groups for thematic coherence, or optimizing keyword selection and match types to ensure maximum relevance and efficiency. Ultimately, this analysis aims to ensure your PPC account possesses a robust and logical architecture that facilitates the delivery of highly targeted ads, leading to improved campaign performance and a stronger return on investment.

Step 4: Evaluate Keyword Performance

Fourthly, evaluate keyword performance. Having established the groundwork through data analysis and campaign structure review, you now delve into the very essence of PPC campaigns – the keywords themselves. Examine the performance of your keywords. Identify high-performing keywords, underperforming ones, and potential new keywords. Analyze metrics like CTR, CPC, and conversion rate.

Evaluating their performance is crucial to ensuring your campaigns attract the most relevant traffic and deliver optimal results. Their analysis involves a meticulous examination of each keyword within your account. Leverage a multifaceted approach, combining KPIs to paint a comprehensive picture of keyword effectiveness, as follows:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – this metric reveals the percentage of users who see and click on your ad. High CTR for a specific keyword indicates strong ad relevance and user interest, potentially signifying a valuable traffic source. Conversely, consistently low CTR might suggest the keyword attracts irrelevant users or requires ad copy optimization.
• Cost per Click (CPC) – this metric reflects the average cost you incur each time someone clicks on your ad for a particular keyword. Analyzing CPC in conjunction with CTR allows you to identify keywords that deliver high click-through rates at a cost-effective rate. Conversely, exceptionally high CPC for a keyword might necessitate reevaluating bidding strategies or a potential pause for further analysis.
• Conversion Rate – this metric reveals the percentage of users who click on your ad and ultimately complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a lead form. Analyzing conversion rates for specific keywords allows you to pinpoint which drives the most valuable actions and contributes most significantly to achieving campaign goals.

By rigorously analyzing these metrics, you can categorize keywords into distinct performance tiers:

1. High-performing keywords – these keywords boast a healthy balance of strong CTR, cost-effective CPC, and high conversion rates. To maximize their impact, they should be prioritized and potentially have their budget allocation increased.
2. Underperforming keywords – these keywords exhibit low CTR, high CPC, or minimal conversions. They warrant further investigation to determine the cause of their underperformance. This might necessitate ad copy revisions, adjustments to keyword match types, or potentially pausing the keyword if declared irrelevant.
3. Potential new keywords – based on understanding your target audience and campaign goals, you can explore opportunities to identify new keywords that align with your offerings and user search intent. Integrating these new keywords can help expand your reach and attract more qualified leads.

Through this comprehensive keyword performance evaluation, you can identify areas for optimization. This might involve refining existing keyword selections, adjusting bidding strategies to prioritize high-performing terms, or incorporating new keywords to broaden your reach. Ultimately, the goal is to curate a targeted and effective keyword portfolio that attracts the right audience, maximizes campaign performance, and delivers a strong return on investment.

Step 5: Review Ad Copy

Fifthly, review ad copy. After meticulously analyzing the lexicon of your keywords, you now shift your focus to the cornerstone of user engagement within your PPC campaigns – the ad copy itself. These concise messages function as the digital handshake that introduces your brand and offerings to your target audience. Evaluating their effectiveness ensures they resonate with users and compel them to click through to your landing pages.

This analysis involves a multi-track approach, dissecting your ad copy based on the key criteria as follows:

• Relevance – the ad copy must demonstrably connect with the specific keywords that triggered its display. It should clearly communicate your value proposition and how it aligns with the user’s search intent. A lack of relevance can lead to user frustration and a decline in click-through rates.
• Clarity – your ad copy should convey a clear, readily comprehensible message. This necessitates the use of concise language, avoiding jargon or overly technical terms. Users should instantly grasp what you offer and the benefits they stand to gain by clicking on your ad.
• Appeal – effective ad copy goes beyond mere clarity; it must also possess a captivating element that compels users to click. This might involve leveraging a strong call to action (CTA), highlighting a unique selling proposition (USP), or even injecting a touch of humor or intrigue to pique user interest.

Implement A/B testing methodologies to optimize ad copy performance further. This involves creating multiple ad copy variations, each emphasizing different aspects of your offering or utilizing distinct CTAs. By strategically displaying these variations to your target audience, you can statistically determine which ad copy resonates most effectively, significantly improving click-through rates and overall campaign performance.

Step 6: Check Landing Page Relevance

Sixtly, check landing page relevance. This crucial digital space is the conversion point, where user interest must translate into a desired action. Therefore, ensuring seamless alignment between your ads, keywords, and landing pages is necessary to maximize campaign effectiveness.

PPC landing page analysis involves a comprehensive assessment of your page through the lens of conversion optimization, as follows:

• Relevance to ad and keywords – the landing page content and messaging must demonstrably connect with the specific ad and keywords that triggered the user’s arrival. There must be a clear thematic link, ensuring that the user’s expectations, based on the ad’s content and the keyword’s intent, are met when they land. The dissonance between the ad and the landing page can lead to user frustration and a swift departure.
• User Experience (UX) – the landing page design and functionality should prioritize a seamless and intuitive user experience. This encompasses clear navigation, easy-to-find information, and a mobile-friendly design. A clunky or confusing user experience can be a significant barrier to conversion.
• Page load speed – landing pages with slow loading times can lead to user impatience and decreasing conversions. Assess page load speeds and recommend optimization strategies, such as image compression or code minimization, to ensure a prompt and frustration-free user experience.
• Clear CTAs – effective landing pages leave no room for ambiguity. They should prominently feature clear and compelling CTAs that guide users toward the desired action, whether purchasing, submitting a lead form, or signing up for a free trial. A lack of clear CTAs can leave users unsure of what step to take next, hindering conversion rates.

By meticulously analyzing these elements, you can identify areas for improvement on your landing pages. This might involve revising content to enhance thematic relevance, streamlining the user journey for optimal clarity, optimizing page load speeds, or incorporating more prominent and persuasive CTAs. You can achieve the best results using the top landing page platform, Landingi, which helps create, test, and optimize landing pages for various digital marketing purposes, including PPC strategies.

Ultimately, the goal is to ensure your landing pages act as a natural extension of your ad copy and keywords, providing a seamless and conversion-oriented experience that maximizes the return on your PPC investment.

Step 7: Analyze Bid Strategies and Budget Allocation

Seventhly, analyze bid strategies and budget allocation. The next phase, after optimizing landing pages, is analyzing bidding strategies and budget allocation. These factors play a crucial role in determining the visibility of your ads, the cost you incur, and, ultimately, the success of your campaigns in achieving their goals. The analysis you should conduct involves a multi-faceted approach, focusing on two key areas:

• Bidding strategies – review your current bidding strategies, assessing their alignment with your overall campaign goals. Evaluate common bidding strategies, such as Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, or Manual Bidding, based on their effectiveness in driving the desired outcomes. For instance, if your primary goal is lead generation, a Target CPA strategy focused on acquiring qualified leads at a specific cost might be optimal. Conversely, if brand awareness is the primary objective, a Maximize Clicks strategy might be more suitable.
• Budget allocation – closely examine the distribution of your PPC budget across various campaigns and ad groups. Ensure the budget is allocated efficiently, prioritizing high-performing campaigns and ad groups while potentially scaling back on those with lower performance. This analysis might involve utilizing historical data and performance metrics to identify areas where budget adjustments can optimize ROI.

Furthermore, explore opportunities for bid adjustments based on the 3 various factors, such as:

1. Time of day & day of week – user behavior can vary based on the time of day or day of week, so adjust bids to prioritize ad visibility during periods of peak user activity.
2. Device targeting – depending on your target audience and their preferred devices for search, adjust bids to prioritize mobile or desktop visibility.
3. Audience targeting – analyzing audience demographics and interests might reveal opportunities for bid adjustments to focus on segments with higher conversion potential.

You can identify optimization opportunities by meticulously analyzing your bidding strategies and budget allocation. This might involve implementing more targeted bidding strategies aligned with your goals, reallocating the budget for greater efficiency, or leveraging bid adjustments to maximize ad exposure during peak user activity periods and for the most relevant audience segments. The goal is to ensure your bids are set at optimal levels to achieve your desired results while maximizing your budget utilization and ensuring a strong return on investment for your PPC campaigns.

Step 8: Evaluate Targeting Settings

Eighthly, evaluate targeting settings. Evaluating your targeting settings ensures your meticulously crafted ads reach the most receptive audience, maximizing campaign effectiveness and return on investment. Targeting analysis delves into the various parameters defining a target audience, like casting a net to capture the most relevant users. The key areas you should analyze involve the following:

• Geographic locations – analyze user location data and campaign performance to refine your targeting for optimal geographic reach.
• Device targeting – examine your device targeting settings, ensuring your ads are displayed on the devices your target audience utilizes most frequently for searching and consuming online content.
• Demographic targeting – analyze your demographic targeting settings to ensure they align with the characteristics of your ideal customer profile. Leverage demographic data such as age, gender, income, and household size to create highly targeted campaigns.
• Audience segmentation –assess your current audience segmentation strategies and explore opportunities to refine them further. This might involve creating new segments based on specific user characteristics or leveraging existing segments for more targeted ad delivery.

By meticulously evaluating these targeting parameters, you can identify potential areas for improvement. Your goal is to ensure your ads are displayed in front of the right audience at the right time, leading to a significant improvement in campaign performance and a stronger return on investment.

Step 9: Assess Quality Scores

Ninthly, assess Quality Scores. Following meticulous targeting setting analysis, focus on a crucial metric within the PPC landscape – Quality Score. Assigned by the advertising platform (e.g., Google Ads), this score reflects the relevance and overall user experience associated with your keywords, ads, and landing pages. When high, it signifies well-aligned components, potentially leading to lower costs and improved ad positions. Conversely, a low Quality Score can indicate areas for improvement that might be hindering campaign performance and inflating costs.

Therefore, a thorough assessment of your Quality Scores is exceptionally important. Delve into the specific Quality Scores assigned to individual keywords and ad groups. This analysis will allow you to pinpoint areas where improvements can be made to elevate your overall ad quality. Approach this optimization process as follows:

• Analyzing ad relevance – examine the relevance of your ad copy to the targeted keywords by ensuring a clear thematic connection between the keywords that trigger the ad and the message conveyed within the ad itself. A strong alignment between these elements is key to achieving a high Quality Score.
• Landing page experience evaluation – assess landing pages associated with your ad groups, ensuring they provide a seamless and user-friendly experience that aligns with the expectations set by your ad copy. Consider factors such as clear navigation, relevant content, and a compelling call to action (CTA).

By meticulously identifying areas for improvement in ad relevance and landing page experience, you can implement targeted optimizations. The goal is to elevate your Quality Score by ensuring all campaign components work cohesively to deliver a positive user experience.

Step 10: Conduct Competitor Analysis (Optional)

Tenthly, but optionally, conduct competitor analysis. While not always mandatory, this analysis can offer valuable insights to further optimize your PPC campaigns. It delves into the strategies employed by your key competitors within the PPC landscape. By understanding their approach, you can identify opportunities to refine your campaigns and potentially gain an edge in the marketplace.

However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that competitor analysis should be approached strategically. Limited resources might necessitate prioritizing other aspects of the audit. If the decision is made to proceed, here’s how you can approach this exploration:

• Identifying key competitors – the first step involves pinpointing your most relevant competitors within the PPC space. This might involve industry research, leveraging competitor intelligence tools, or analyzing your PPC platform’s “search terms” reports to identify which domains frequently appear alongside yours.
• Unveiling competitor strategies – once your key competitors are identified, employ various methods to uncover their PPC strategies. This might involve utilizing industry tools to analyze competitor ad copy, keyword selections, and landing page elements. Additionally, directly observing competitor ads displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) can provide valuable insights into their messaging and targeting approaches.

By meticulously examining competitor strategies, you can access valuable knowledge. Competitor analysis might reveal relevant keywords your campaigns are currently missing, presenting an opportunity to expand your keyword portfolio and potentially reach a wider audience. Analyzing competitor ad copy can inspire you to craft even more compelling messaging for your own ads. Examining competitor landing pages can provide valuable insights into design elements, content structure, and CTA placement that contribute to a positive user experience. This knowledge can be leveraged to optimize your own landing pages for enhanced conversion rates.

It’s important to remember that competitor analysis should not simply involve imitating competitor strategies. The goal is to gather valuable insights and adapt them to your specific brand identity, target audience, and campaign objectives.

Step 11: Develop an Action Plan

Eleventhly, develop an action plan. Following the comprehensive analysis of your PPC campaigns, the culmination of this audit process lies in creating a meticulously crafted action plan. This plan serves as a strategic roadmap, outlining the recommendations and optimizations you will implement to elevate your campaign performance and achieve your desired outcomes.

The action plan should be a collaborative effort, ensuring clear communication and alignment with your priorities. Your action plan should include the following elements:

• Prioritization of recommendations – based on the audit findings, prioritize the identified areas for improvement. This prioritization should consider factors such as potential impact on performance, ease of implementation, and resource allocation. High-impact recommendations with a strong potential to improve key metrics like conversions or return on investment (ROI) should be prioritized for initial action.
• Development of actionable steps – for each prioritized recommendation, outline a series of clear and actionable steps. These steps should detail the specific tasks required to implement the optimization, including timelines, resource allocation, and ownership assignment. This ensures a well-defined roadmap for putting the identified improvements into effect.
• Performance monitoring and iteration – the action plan is not a static document. Establish a framework for ongoing performance monitoring to track the impact of implemented optimizations. This might involve generating regular reports that analyze changes in key metrics and identify areas where further adjustments might be necessary. The action plan itself can be a living document, iterated upon as new data insights emerge and campaign performance evolves.

Developing a comprehensive action plan provides a clear path for optimizing your PPC campaigns. This ensures a data-driven and flexible approach, allowing you to continuously refine your campaigns and maximize their return on investment.

Step 12: Implement Changes and Test

Lastly, implement changes and test. Having collaboratively established a prioritized action plan, implement the recommended changes. This phase necessitates a focus on precision and attention to detail in each of the 3 key phases: change implementation, testing, and performance monitoring.

1. Change Implementation

Ensure a smooth execution, incorporating phased rollout. This allows for the controlled implementation of changes, enabling you to monitor their impact on a smaller scale before broader application. This approach can alleviate potential risks and ensure a smoother overall transition.

Track the progress of each action item within the plan using professional management tools. This ensures clear responsibility and timely completion of tasks, and facilitates communication throughout the implementation process.

2. Testing

However, optimization is not a one-time endeavor. To ensure sustained improvement, utilize ongoing A/B testing methodologies. This allows you to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented changes and identify areas for further refinement.

Use the chosen advertising platform’s A/B testing features or leverage external tools integrations to create variations of key campaign elements, such as ad creatives or bidding strategies. Remember to test landing pages – for this purpose, use Landingi with a built-in A/B testing tool and experiment with various page versions effortlessly. These variations will then be displayed to a statistically significant portion of your target audience, allowing you to compare their performance and identify the most effective approach. EventTracker tool can be valuable for tracking events and user behavior across your pages, providing you with deep insights for further data-based optimizations.

3. Performance Monitoring

The final pillar of this stage involves the establishment of a robust performance monitoring framework. This allows you to continuously track the impact of implemented changes and identify areas where further adjustments might be necessary. You should maintain a watchful eye on campaign progress through regular reporting. Generate regular reports that provide a comprehensive overview of key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and return on investment (ROI). This allows for a clear understanding of your campaign’s performance and the impact of the implemented optimizations.

As previously mentioned, the action plan is a living document. Based on the insights gathered from performance monitoring and A/B testing, the plan should be iterated to reflect new data and evolving campaign dynamics. This ensures a flexible and data-driven approach to optimization, allowing you to refine your campaigns and maximize their return on investment continuously.

What Are the Key Elements to Review on a Landing Page During a PPC Audit?

Key elements to review on a landing page during a PPC audit include ad relevance, headlines, call-to-actions, user experience, mobile optimization, loading speed, trust signals, visual elements, and, most importantly, forms and input fields. By implementing landing page best practices, you can significantly boost their effectiveness, drive more conversions, and improve overall campaign performance.

Use the bullet list below as your checklist for the landing page optimization process in a PPC audit:

1. Relevance to ad copy and keywords – the landing page content should be closely aligned with the ad copy and the keywords used in your PPC campaigns. This alignment enhances user experience and improves quality scores.
2. Clear and compelling headline – the headline should immediately convey the main message or offer and grab the visitor’s attention. It also should be relevant to the ad that brought the user to the page.
3. Strong CTA – the CTA should be clear, compelling, and prominently placed to guide the visitor toward the desired action, such as filling out a form, making a purchase, or signing up for a newsletter.
4. User Experience (UX) – the page should be free of clutter and distractions, allowing visitors to focus on the main message and CTA. Evaluating the overall user experience includes ease of navigation, readability, and visual appeal.
5. Mobile optimization – the landing page must be fully optimized for mobile devices. This includes responsive design, fast loading times, and easy navigation on smaller screens.
6. Loading speed – a PPC landing page should load quickly, as slow-loading pages can lead to high bounce rates and poor user experience. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help identify areas for improvement.
7. Trust signals – it must include trust signals such as customer testimonials, reviews, security badges, and certifications. These elements can help build credibility and reassure visitors.
8. Visual elements – images, videos, and other visual elements should be high-quality, relevant, and contribute to the overall message and user experience.
9. Forms and input fields – if your landing page includes a form, it must be user-friendly and include clear instructions. Minimize the number of fields to reduce friction and improve conversion rates.

Ensure that conversion tracking is properly set up to monitor the landing page’s effectiveness. This allows you to measure and analyze the success of your PPC campaigns in driving desired actions.

If you’re seeking a landing page creation and optimization tool to enhance your PPC campaigns, look no further. The best choice is Landingi, a multifunctional digital marketing platform that simplifies the process of landing page creation, testing, and optimization, also for PPC marketing purposes.

The platform offers over 400 templates for various industries and campaign goals, which can be easily customized with its user-friendly editor. AI landing page features simplify generating compelling, ad-relevant content for the entire landing page based on your prompts. Landingi supports 29 languages, offering translation options (also for RTL landing pages), which allow you to create perfect PPC pages aligned with your target audiences in just a few clicks.

Landingi’s A/B testing tool allows you to experiment with various page versions to determine which performs best and provides the highest conversion. Thanks to the EventTracker tool, you can effortlessly track events and user behavior across your pages. Data gathered in the Landingi Dashboard lets you make informed decisions on further optimizations.

With the Form Builder, you can implement perfectly designed forms to your landing pages, making them high-converting digital marketing tools for generating leads. Smart Sections is another landing page management facilitation, allowing the implementation of bulk changes in multiple landing pages within just a few clicks. Moreover, with over 180 integrations offered by Landingi, you can leverage this platform as your PPC landing page handyman, seamlessly connected with your existing PPC toolkit.

Where Can I Find the PPC Audit Template?

You can find PPC audit templates in various online resources that cater to digital marketing professionals – they are often available in PPC tools, like SEMrush, shared on PPC-related blogs, and sometimes provided by PPC specialists.

Ed Leake, founder of AdEvolver and active digital marketing expert with extensive experience in digital advertising, shared a PPC Google Ads audit template, which is probably the best resource for everyone wanting to enhance their PPC campaigns. Another valuable source of tips for campaign audits is the Vixen Digital website, where digital marketing specialists developed a guide and shared a free PPC audit checklist and template.

By exploring common digital advertising tools, like HubSpot, SEMrush, or Google Ads, you can find many PPC audit templates and choose those that suit your needs. They can help streamline your audit process, ensuring a thorough and effective evaluation of your PPC campaigns.

How Can I Get a PPC Audit for Free?

Obtaining a free PPC audit is possible through several avenues – for instance, many digital marketing agencies offer complimentary PPC audits to attract potential clients. You can take advantage of these offers by contacting agencies like WebFX, which frequently provide free initial audits to showcase their expertise.

Another option is to utilize free tools and resources available online. Platforms like Google Ads provide built-in tools for basic account health checks and performance insights. Additionally, websites such as HubSpot offer free PPC audit templates and tools that you can use to conduct your own audit.

Finally, take advantage of educational resources. Many digital marketing blogs, including those from Moz and Search Engine Journal, publish step-by-step guides on performing PPC audits. By following these guides, you can systematically review your campaigns without incurring costs.

What Are the Best PPC Audit Tools?

The best PPC audit tools are Semrush, Optmyzr, and SpyFu. Each tool offers unique features to help you conduct a thorough and effective PPC audit. Your choice will depend on your specific requirements, budget, and the level of detail you need. Learn more about the best PPC tools for comprehensive PPC audits and choose the one that aligns with your needs.

1. Semrush

Semrush is one of the best PPC audit tools due to its comprehensive features and user-friendly interface. It offers in-depth keyword research, ad copy analysis, and competitor insights, enabling marketers to optimize their campaigns effectively. Detailed reports and actionable recommendations help improve performance and ROI. Semrush’s extensive database and advanced analytics provide a competitive edge, making it an invaluable tool for thorough and effective PPC audits. Its versatility across various digital marketing aspects ensures that users have all the necessary resources to enhance their PPC strategies.

2. Optmyzr

Optmyzr is another great PPC audit tool for its advanced features and automation capabilities. It offers custom PPC reports, automated scripts, and powerful optimization tools that simplify complex tasks. Optmyzr helps identify underperforming keywords, ads, and landing pages, providing actionable recommendations to boost performance. Its intuitive interface and robust data analysis make it ideal for detailed PPC audits. With features like campaign automation, bid management, and real-time alerts, Optmyzr ensures continuous improvement and efficiency, making it a top choice for comprehensive PPC ad campaign optimization.

3. SpyFu

SpyFu is a popular PPC audit tool appreciated for its unique competitive analysis capabilities. It allows users to uncover competitors’ ad strategies, keywords, and ad spend, offering deep insights that drive campaign improvements. SpyFu provides detailed reports on keyword performance, ad history, and competitor tactics, enabling users to refine their PPC strategies effectively. Its user-friendly interface and extensive data make it ideal for identifying new opportunities and optimizing ad campaigns. By revealing competitor strengths and weaknesses, SpyFu empowers users to make data-driven decisions and achieve superior PPC performance.

How Much Does a PPC Audit Cost?

The cost of a PPC audit ranges from $0 for basic audits that agencies offer to attract new customers, through $500–$2000 for standard audits, to over $2000 for advanced audits. PPC audit costs can vary widely based on factors such as the audit’s depth, the ad account’s size, and the provider’s expertise. Check out the general cost breakdown and see what you might expect:

1. Free audits – many digital marketing agencies offer free basic PPC audits as a way to attract new clients. These audits typically provide a high-level overview of your account’s performance with some basic recommendations.
2. Standard audits – prices can range from $500 to $2,000 for a more detailed audit. These audits include a comprehensive analysis of keywords, ad copy, landing pages, bid strategies, and more, with actionable recommendations.
3. Advanced audits – for large accounts or highly detailed audits, costs can range from $2,000 to $10,000 or more. These audits often involve in-depth analysis, custom reporting, and ongoing consultation to implement changes and track improvements.

If you have the ability to conduct the audit yourself, the cost will be limited to a professional tools subscription. SpyFu costs $39 for a basic plan to $79 for a professional one. For SEMrush, you will pay from $139.95 monthly. Optmyzr subscription costs from €208 monthly.

The PPC cost, including audit costs, ultimately depends on your business’s specific needs and the scope of the audit. It’s important to choose a provider who can offer the level of detail and expertise required to significantly improve your PPC campaigns.

How Often Should I Conduct a PPC Audit?

You should conduct a PPC audit every three to six months. Regular PPC audits ensure your campaigns remain optimized and aligned with your business goals. Conducting audits quarterly allows you to adjust for any seasonal changes and capitalize on trends, while a six-month interval helps maintain long-term campaign health.

Frequent audits are the most important part of PPC management and are particularly crucial when significant changes occur in your business, industry, or advertising platforms. For instance, if you launch new products, face increased competition, or there are updates in Google Ads or other platforms, an audit can help you adapt quickly. Additionally, periodic audits enable continuous improvement by identifying waste areas, uncovering new opportunities, and ensuring your ad spend is effectively utilized. Scheduling regular PPC audits equips you with the tools to continuously fine-tune your PPC strategies, enhance campaign effectiveness, and significantly improve your return on investment.

What Are Common Mistakes to Avoid During a PPC Audit?

During a PPC account audit, it’s essential to avoid several common mistakes, such as neglecting to analyze PPC metrics, overlooking irrelevant keywords, not analyzing search query reports, ignoring ad copy performance, disregarding Quality Scores, failing to segment data, and not setting clear goals. Learn how these mistakes can affect your audit process and avoid them to ensure a thorough and effective evaluation, leading to better campaign performance and higher returns on investment.

• Neglecting to review conversion tracking – a critical aspect of a PPC audit is ensuring that conversion tracking is properly set up and functioning. Failing to review and verify tracking means you could miss out on valuable data regarding which campaigns and keywords are driving conversions. Without accurate conversion tracking, measuring the true performance of your PPC efforts is impossible.
• Overlooking negative keywords – ignoring the negative keyword list can lead to wasted ad spend on irrelevant searches. During a PPC audit, it’s crucial to regularly review and update your negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for searches that are unlikely to convert. This helps to optimize your budget and improve overall campaign performance.
• Not analyzing search query reports – the report provides insights into the terms people use to find your ads. Failing to analyze this report can mean missing opportunities to add high-performing search terms as keywords or to identify irrelevant queries that should be added as negative keywords. Regular review helps to refine and focus your targeting.
• Ignoring ad copy performance – overlooking the performance of your ad copy can result in missed opportunities for optimization. An effective PPC audit should thoroughly analyze ad copy performance, including click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and relevance. A/B testing different versions of ad copy can help identify what resonates best with your audience.
• Disregarding Quality Scores – Quality Score is a significant factor in your ad’s performance and cost. Ignoring Quality Scores during an audit can lead to inefficient campaigns. Reviewing and optimizing elements that impact this score, such as ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR, is essential for improving campaign efficiency and lowering costs.
• Failing to segment data – not segmenting data by dimensions such as device, location, and time can result in a lack of insights into specific performance trends. Segmenting data allows you to identify and capitalize on areas where your ads perform best, and it helps you make more informed decisions about budget allocation and bid adjustments.
• Not setting clear goals and KPIs – a PPC audit without clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) lacks direction. Establishing specific, measurable goals helps evaluate the success of your campaigns more effectively. Without these benchmarks, it’s challenging to determine what changes need to be made to achieve desired outcomes.

How to Analyze PPC Campaign Performance Metrics in an Audit?

To analyze PPC campaign performance metrics in an audit, focus on conversion data and evaluate CTR, then analyze cost metrics, assess Quality Scores, segment performance data, and finally, assess ad copy and keywords. Check out the explanation below and take it as your PPC audit checklist for evaluating performance metrics. Regular audits using these steps ensure continuous optimization and better campaign results.

1. Review conversion data – ensure conversion tracking is accurate. Focus on conversion rates, cost per conversion, and total conversions to assess effectiveness.
2. Evaluate CTR – high CTR indicates relevant ads. Compare CTR across campaigns and ad groups to identify strong and weak areas.
3. Analyze cost metrics – look at cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), and overall spending. Identify any campaigns with high costs but low returns.
4. Inspect quality scores – review Quality Scores to pinpoint areas needing improvement, such as ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR.
5. Segment performance data – break down data by device, location, and time to uncover specific performance trends and optimize accordingly.
6. Assess ad copy and keywords – examine the performance of different ad copies and keywords. Remove underperforming keywords and test new ad variations.

How to Evaluate Keyword Performance During a PPC Audit?

To evaluate keyword performance during a PPC audit, start by analyzing conversion data to identify which keywords are driving valuable actions and which are not. Then, assess click-through rates (CTR) to determine keyword relevance – higher CTRs indicate better alignment with user intent. Examine cost metrics, such as cost per click (CPC) and cost per acquisition (CPA), to identify costly keywords needing adjustment or removal.

You can also review Quality Scores to ensure your PPC keywords are optimized for ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR. Lastly, segment performance data by various dimensions like device and location to uncover trends and optimize accordingly. Regularly updating and refining your keyword list based on this analysis can significantly enhance campaign effectiveness.

Conduct a PPC Audit and Optimize Your Campaigns with Landingi

Conducting a PPC audit is crucial for maintaining and enhancing the effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaigns. By systematically reviewing and optimizing your campaigns, you can identify areas of improvement, eliminate inefficiencies, and maximize your return on investment. Following the step-by-step guide from this article ensures a thorough analysis, covering all critical aspects from keyword performance to ad copy effectiveness.

Regular PPC audits not only help keep your campaigns aligned with your marketing goals but also adapt to changing market dynamics and consumer behaviors. By staying proactive with your PPC strategy, you can continuously improve your campaigns, drive more qualified traffic, and achieve better overall performance.

However, PPC audits shouldn’t be limited only to ads. They must involve landing page evaluation and optimization to ensure clear conversion paths. Complete your PPC audit toolkit with professional landing page optimization software – try Landingi now, test various page versions, gather valuable insights to make data-based optimizations, and watch your PPC campaigns turn into powerful digital marketing tools that bring higher ROI.