It’s that time of the month when you log in to your Google Ads account and see how much you’ve spent. You spent your budget, your ads received clicks, but your phone didn’t light up as you expected. Most of the time, managing your ads feels like putting money into a slot machine and expecting to come out with more than you put in.

If you run paid search ads and don’t do a monthly review, you are wasting money. New features are being added to your account, and your customers are constantly searching in different ways. A Google Ads audit helps you see where your money is going and keep your budget focused on driving revenue.

Why Do You Need to Do a Monthly Google Ads Audit?

A Google Ads audit helps you spot budget waste, ensure conversions are tracked correctly, and make sure your account isn’t spending on things you’re not looking for. It can also help you find new opportunities to improve overall Google Ads performance.

Find where your budget is bleeding
Make sure your conversions are accurate
Check your keywords and negative keywords
Allocate your budget to your highest earners

Search engines want to show advertisers as many clicks as possible. While there are cases where you may want to allow this, it can cause you to spend your budget on searches you don’t want to show up for.

By checking your account every month, you can avoid a huge bill at the end of the quarter. You can make small changes that keep your account in the black and lower your cost per lead over time.

What Should You Look At When Analyzing Your Campaign Performance?

You should be looking at your campaign’s performance at the bottom line. Make sure you check your conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS). These will let you know if you are actually making money from your Google Ads audit.

You can buy clicks, but if you aren’t making money, those clicks aren’t doing you any good. When checking your account, separate your metrics into surface-level and money-level metrics.

Metric	What to Check	Why It’s Important
Surface Level	CTR (Click-Through Rate)	Shows how relevant your ads are to the searcher’s intent
Surface Level	CPC (Cost per Click)	Will tell you how much you are paying per click and if your quality score is dropping
Money	CVR (Conversion Rate)	Shows you whether your landing page is converting your clicks
Money	CPA (Cost per Acquisition)	Tells you how much you are paying to get a lead or sale
Money	ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)	Shows you how much revenue your account is generating

If you start to see your CPC increase, but your conversion rate isn’t going up, you may be facing more competition or your Quality Score is dropping. Knowing this lets you take the right actions to fix your account.

How Can You Use Your Search Terms Report to Save Money?

Your search terms report shows what people type to see your ad. By checking this report, you can find people who aren’t converting and add those to your negative keyword list. It will also help you see whether your customers are searching for something different than you think.

Just because you are targeting the keyword “commercial plumbing repair” doesn’t mean your ad will only show up for that search. Your ad could be showing up for someone who is searching “how to fix my plumbing at home for free.”

Check through your search terms and see what you can cut. Once you remove these, more money will go to search terms that are actually converting for you.

Are Your Conversions Being Tracked Correctly?

You want to make sure your account is tracking actual leads and not just someone visiting a page or clicking on a button. Accurate conversions help your bid strategy spend money on real revenue.

Your bid strategy is only as good as the conversions you’re feeding it. If your account thinks someone who visited your contact page is a lead, your bid strategy will try to find more people like that.

Tip: Fill out your forms and make sure they are showing up in your Google Ads conversion report. If you’re not getting leads from these forms, you may want to remove them from your account.

Make sure you aren’t double-counting conversions from old conversion tags or having your conversion fire when someone refreshes their page. Compare your conversions to your actual leads to make sure your numbers are lining up.

How Can You Analyze Your Spend?

By analyzing your spend, you can see where you are losing money and reallocate that budget to keywords and areas that convert. Make sure your money goes to what is making you money.

Many accounts spread their budget across too many campaigns. This can starve your best-selling product or service and send your budget to things that aren’t converting.

Find campaigns that are hitting their daily budget cap and converting well.
Lower the daily budget cap on campaigns with a high cost per lead.
Adjust your bid modifiers to spend more in certain areas or times of day.
See if you have any experiments running that are eating up your budget.

Once you move your budget to your best-converting keywords, you will get more leads without increasing your budget.

How Can You Improve Your Ads?

By reviewing your ads, you can see which headlines and descriptions perform best. You can also find new ways to improve your ads and help increase your Quality Score.

Since Google lets you add multiple headlines and descriptions to your ads, you can test what works best. Your ads still need to match what people are searching for.

Check your ads monthly to see what’s working and what isn’t. If you have a headline that says “Low,” replace it with something that will help your customer know what you’re offering.

What Should You Check On Your Landing Pages?

Make sure your landing pages load quickly and that the message your ad delivers matches what your landing page says. If your page takes too long to load, you will lose customers before they can convert.

If you’re driving traffic to a page that takes a long time to load, you are wasting your ad spend. Make sure your pages are optimized and load within 3 seconds on mobile.

Your landing page headline should match what your ad says. If your ad says we offer same-day service, make sure your landing page says the same thing. This will help increase your ad conversion rate.

Why Should You Check Your Negative Keywords Every Month?

Negative keywords help stop your ads from showing up for searches you don’t want. You can add cities that you don’t service, keywords that say free and more.

You shouldn’t just add negative keywords when you first set up your account. Search engines are constantly changing what they show your ads for, so you need to keep checking.

Find search terms that aren’t converting and add them to your negative keywords.

You can also create shared negative keyword lists to use across all your campaigns. Common negatives include competitors you don’t want to show up for, plus job- and software-related keywords.

How Can You Find New Keyword Opportunities?

You can find new opportunities by checking your impression share and looking for new keywords to target. Once you find these, you can increase your budget and start growing your account.

By checking your search impression share, you can see how often your ad showed up out of total searches. If you are losing impression share to budget, you know you can spend more money on that campaign.

You can also check your auction insights to see whether new competitors have entered your market. This can help you find new ways to beat the competition and increase your market share.

Need Help With Your Google Ads? Call the Dallas SEO Dogs

There are many things you should be checking when it comes to your Google Ads account. We’ve helped companies with paid search ads for over 20 years. We will help you stop wasting money on ads that aren’t converting and help you get more out of your ad spend. We will never hide your ad spend from you and will give you the context you need to know what is working and what isn’t. If you need help with your Google Ads management, landing pages or Google Ads optimization, reach out to the Dallas SEO Dogs today.

FAQ

How often should I do a Google Ads audit?

You should be doing a light google ads audit once a month. You can do a more in depth audit once a quarter to make sure everything is up to date. Checking your search terms, negative keywords and conversions will help you save money on your ads.

Why is my cost per lead going up?

Your cost per lead could be going up due to more competition in your area. It could also be that your ads are showing up for searches that aren’t converting. Make sure you are checking your search terms and adding negative keywords to your account.

What is the difference between PPC management and a PPC audit?

PPC management is when you are actively managing your account day to day. You are changing bids, writing ads and making changes to your campaigns. A PPC audit is when you are looking at your account as a whole and finding ways to improve.

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