What is a Google Ads Audit?

Search advertising campaigns require a lot of fine-tuning in order to stand out among the rest.

If you are wondering why you are not seeing an increase in leads after running Google ads or planning for better ad return in 2022, an audit is an excellent way to understand if your campaign has been performing the best it can for you and whether there are any improvements that could be made.

A Google ads audit will take a comprehensive look at different aspects of your google ads campaign, evaluate how effective you pay per click advertising is, and identify hidden issues that are hurting your ad campaigns. Identifying these issues you can improve the overall health and performance of your account.

There is no such thing as ‘too late’ to conduct a Google ads audit as the information you gain will improve performance. An audit will dive into your account and seek out areas of your campaign strategy that could use more attention to improve your overall performance.

Why is it important that your business gets a Google Ads audit?

The key benefit that comes from a Google Ads audit is a better understanding of your current account performance, gaps, and untapped opportunities. Other advantages of utilising an audit include:

• Assess ad performances and make changes to ad copy based on your highest performing ads
• Properly track your conversions to calculate an accurate ROI
• Identify new opportunities to expand
• Adapt your campaign structure to improve ad relevance and CPC
• Maximise your ad space by setting up or increasing ad extensions
• Review your keyword use and optimise keyword bidding strategies
• Gain audience insights and enhance ongoing management processes

Why should a 3rd party perform the audit?

You could perform a Google Ads audit within your company but it has been shown that the benefits of having the audit performed by a third party far outweigh those of doing it yourself. The longer you spend working on a campaign, the easier it is for things to slip past you, engaging an independent Google ads professional will allow the audit to be more comprehensive as it will have a fresh set of eyes looking over it. If you have someone within the company doing the audit there is a higher possibility of bias and you run the risk of potential errors or weaknesses being overlooked. 

There are a number of Google experts and agencies that offer automated or manual audits of your Google ads activity. While the automated audits can provide you with an audit quicker than one conducted manually, the algorithm-based results can often lack the context of your goals, focus audience, and desired outcomes.

Having a digital marketing expert carry out your Google Ads audit will help you gain invaluable insights needed to make decisions regarding your budget and uncover big opportunities where you can improve your Google advertisements through pay-per-click services.

What key areas should be analysed in a Google ads audit?

In a comprehensive Google Ads audit you should expect to see a wealth of data that will help you under how your ads are performing. Some of the key areas that will be analysed include:

• Return on ad spend – Where are your current marketing dollars being spent? Are you getting the best possible returns?
• Ad copy and keywords – How do these rank and can they be adapted to benefit your business? 
• Targeting Options – Are you targeting the right audience for your service/product?
• Ad rank and overall quality – Can these be improved? 
• Landing page content & website speed – Are these performing to the highest standard? 
• Your competitors – How are you holding up against the competition?
• Trend analysis – Are there untapped opportunities that you are missing out on?

Why SearchMax?

With over a decade of experience, SearchMax has been helping companies improve their digital marketing strategies by providing thorough Google Ads audits. and Google Adwords Management in Melbourne. With SearchMax, your complimentary Google Ads audit won’t be a rush job automated online. A Google Ads certified digital marketing specialist will go through and analyse your current strategy with a fine-tooth comb and write an extensive report for you. The insights provided in your personalised report will give you a starting point to create highly targeted and extremely effective advertising campaigns.