Don’t have time for an in-depth PPC campaign audit? No problem! Here are some simple audit steps recommended by professional PPC audit agencies to quickly evaluate campaign health.
Review Quality Score
Start your PPC campaign audit by examining the Quality Score of components such as expected CTR from ads, ad relevance and landing page experience. Quality Score is an indication of ad quality and a score above five can lead to lower CPC and better ad ranking. You can improve the score by refining ad copy, organizing keywords in tightly themed ad groups, optimizing landing pages and adding negative keywords.
Analyze Keyword Performance
In your quick campaign audit, review keywords performance to identify non-performing keywords and keywords that are helping you meet campaign objectives. View performance for a specific time period or analyze by keyword match types. Run a keyword diagnosis to find Quality Score. Eliminate non-performing and poorly performing keywords immediately to cut costs in the short term. Consult a professional PPC audit agency for long-term optimizations.
Study Impression Share
Review impression share at campaign, ad group and keyword level (product groups also for Shopping campaigns). Impression share is the ratio of how many times your ad has appeared to the total number of times it could have shown in percentage terms. This is a good way of understanding whether your ad could reach more audience if you modify budget or bid.
Go Through CTRs
Analyze click through rates of your ads as this metric has important bearing on several aspects of a PPC campaign including Quality Score, minimum bid and CPC. Low CTR can lead to lower ad rank, lower Quality Score and higher CPC. Click through rate is the ratio between the number of times users have clicked on an ad and number of times an ad has shown (impressions). CTR gives you an idea of ad relevance against search queries typed by users.
Scan Locations Reports
Pull locations reports to review your ads’ geographical performance. Use the data to find out where your users are and which locations showed interest in your ads. Make appropriate bid adjustments – if you notice poor performing locations, eliminate or restrict spending to those areas. If you’re using location ad extensions, scan the distance report to see how your ads performed in various areas near your business.
Check Ad Extensions
A good PPC audit agency would recommend reviewing ad extensions as these optional elements have the power to influence ad relevance and Quality Score. Make sure you’re using the right ad extensions at the campaign level and ad group level. Focus on the most useful ad extensions including site link extensions, call extensions, location extensions (for local businesses) and review extensions.
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