How Do You Do PPC Audit?

In general, it is best to delay PPC testing after making major changes. You rely on data to tell the story of what happened to the account, so you want to collect data for a few months. Significant changes to the ad program can disrupt statistics and make data analysis more difficult.

PPC Audit testing can vary greatly in depth and detail. They have divided them into two general categories:

1. Tool-based PPC testing
2. Complete research of PPC

Let’s look at each of these categories in more detail.

Tool-Based PPC Audit

Tool-based PPC testing can be done in-house or by an external consultant or agency.

This test uses software-based testing tools often combined with some sort of almost minor human analysis tool.

You will see this type of PPC testing performed by agencies or coordinators to promote their PPC administrative services. They will test your PPC system for free. After that, they will reimburse you for the recommendations they will use to cover their normal expenses.

There is nothing wrong with that. But these types of research are limited and can vary greatly in how useful they are. It depends on how much the research team relies on its tools, and how much time we spend understanding your business and your goals.

Items change quickly in paid search. What worked yesterday may not work today.

Considering how much of these “free” tests need to happen to find a new client, most do not involve an effort to understand your business. So they are superficial, failing to take into account the many characteristics of your clients, people, products, season, competition, and more.

Comprehensive PPC Research

Usually, an experienced external expert or agency conducts extensive PPC research to bring new ideas to your ad accounts. They start with conversations and change to get deeper into what drives traffic.

A comprehensive review should include all major advertising networks and forums. This may include:

• Google Ads
• Microsoft Advertising
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Google Display & Video 360
• Restoration

Sample Google Ads Audit

When researching these networks and forums, PPC experts differ in their analysis. If you had five PPC experts doing the research, you would have got eight different ideas. Fortunately, many can agree most of the time, cunningly based on knowledge.

Let’s take a look at a sample of Google Ads. In Google Ads, PPC testing may analyze the following types of information.

1. Account basics:
• How to set up an account?
• Is conversion set?
• Is the account linked to Google Analytics?
2. Campaigns:
• Are the campaign settings properly configured?
• What bidding strategies are used?
3. Direction:
• What are the target areas?
• Do you need local bid adjustments?
• What resources and audiences are targeted?
4. Advertising and message groups:
• How are ad groups organized?
• Are there any banned ads? If so, why?
• Are the message messages relevant and accurate?
5. Ad formats and campaign types:
• What types of campaigns and ad formats are used?
• How to use the following: Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs), Ad Extensions, Promotional Extensions, Purchase Campaigns, Retail Advertising List (RLSA), Show re-marketing campaigns?
6. Keywords:
• Which keywords are targeted? What is their Quality Score?
• What types of keyword matching are used?
• How complete is the list of conflicting keywords?

Contact us for a PPC campaign audit.

Conclusion

In general, PPC audits place a strong focus on the Google Ads Network due to its market dominance. Google holds about 92% of the search engine rankings worldwide (as of July 2020). By comparison, Bing has only about 3 percent and Yahoo has 2%.