Best Tools for Google Ad Auditing

Creating an ad campaign is not enough to boost the bidding strategy for your campaigns. Google AdWords advertisers need insightful data on key metrics to save money and make educated decisions to improve their campaigns.

Proper management is needed to gain success through conversion tracking, targeting keywords, and appropriate bids. Assessing your approach with a comprehensive free Google Ads audit is recommended.

In this guide, we’ll introduce you to PPC audits concept and importance. Additionally, we’ll take you through the steps involved and the role of Google AdWords audit tools in the auditing process.

After you’ve gained the necessary insight, we’ll talk about the ten best tools for auditing your Google Ads campaigns to improve rankings and conversions. Let’s begin, then.

What Is Google Ads Audit?

Let us start by understanding the concept of Google Ads audits. It’s the process of evaluating how your Google AdWords account is performing compared to its competitors. Once you run a Google Ads account audit, it will notify you of the hidden mistakes in the ad campaign that need immediate addressing.

Google Ads advertisers need insightful data on critical metrics to save money and make educated decisions to improve their campaigns. Proper management is needed to gain success through conversion tracking, targeting keywords, and appropriate bids.

After this has been identified, advertisers and marketing strategists find improving the account’s overall performance or the particular ad group. That being said, there’s no need to make campaign or account upgrades while running the PPC audit tool (unless something critical needs to be addressed immediately).

Ensure you thoroughly review the audit process to put the results and reports it delivers into action. After all, you obviously wouldn’t want to begin a never-ending audit with changing objectives throughout the process.

It’s essential to keep the following critical factors in mind for a successful Google Ads audit:

1. Identify and understand the importance of what needs to be reviewed.
2. The status of each item in the process should be reviewed and documented.
3. Make a note of all the items that have to be addressed post-audit.

Why Is PPC Audit Important?

Suppose you’re taking over a Google Ads account from a client, or you could be starting a new role in a company. In such cases, knowing how the PPC campaigns are performing is important before investing significant money and time in them. Even crucial management, bids, bidding strategies, and budget allocation should only be made after periodic audits of an ad campaign.

The reports and results obtained from these audits will help you gain the required insight into the ways of ad campaign optimisation. You’ll know the areas requiring improvement, and by focusing on them while performing the Google AdWords account audit, you’ll inevitably maximise the PPC return on investment (ROI).

Let’s take a look at the few benefits that result from PPC audits:

• Boosts the management processes
• Finds locations of spending wastes
• Expand the ad campaign by identifying new opportunities
• Validates assumptions
• It helps gain audience insights, which can be applied to PPC accounts and other marketing platforms

How Do Google Ads Audit Tools Help In The Auditing Process?

To understand how Google Ads audit tools help in auditing, we need to dive into the depths of how to go about the auditing process itself. Let’s get started, then.

1. Reviewing Goals

The first step in the auditing process is understanding your business goals and objectives. You might have multiple conversion goals aligning with best practices, so understand them and the outcomes you seek to set the tone for the rest of the process.

Here is a list of factors to consider:

• Conversion goals for your company and Google Ads campaign
• Tracking of leads, sales, and traffic in addition to performance
• Changes in goals

2. Reviewing Ad Account Structure

The best way to manage campaigns and pull out information is using the PPC (pay-per-click) audit tool. Utilising Google Ads conversion tracking, you can leverage data to refine account structure and control ad campaign bids, management, and budget.

In this step, you’ll need to analyse certain aspects of the Google Analytics account structure, which wouldn’t be possible without auditing tools. Some of these aspects are:

• Representation of different campaign setting level segments.
• Meaningful reporting of campaigns within ad groups.
• Comparable to other advertising campaigns and balanced budgets.

3. Campaign And Account Settings

You might have to adjust the campaign and account settings based on your previous reviews. An easy way to review the ad campaign settings is by:

• Accurately targeting geographical locations.
• Using the desired bidding strategies, budget, ad delivery methods, etc.
• Use of dynamic search keywords and relevant ads

4. Ad Groups

Don’t think of these as a group of keywords; each ad group should contain keywords and terms, complementing each other with ads and ad extensions written to encompass a product or service. That said, quality scores play a vital role in an ad group. The metrics the Google Ads audit tool provides, including click-through rates, conversion rates, landing page experience, and ad copy relevance, help determine an ad group’s quality score.

5. Keywords

If you wish to stay on the right track, use the right auditing tool to evaluate the set of keywords for each Google Ad group as per your goal. That said, different match types, negative keyword lists, and search queries must be considered.

Begin with the keywords you’re already targeting; check whether they lead to a high ad spend but low conversions. After this, review people’s search queries and incorporate negative keywords to filter out unrelated queries, ensuring your ads reach potential customers. If any searches don’t make sense but contribute to an ad spend, add them as a negative keyword to eliminate irrelevant search terms so your ad doesn’t appear on irrelevant search results.

6. Ad Copy

Once you’re done reviewing the keywords of individual ads, progress to ad copy. Test all the different versions of the expanded text ads to determine which version will perform better in the ad campaign. Also, ensure you include different keywords to give users a clear idea of what kind of product or service you deal with.

Implementing these strategies will help elevate your ad rank and enhance the overall quality score. Finally, you’d want to encourage your target audience to click on your ad or website, increasing the CTR. So, use Google’s prescribed guidelines to include strong calls to action in the headlines.

7. Landing Pages

Last on this Google Ads audit checklist are the relevant landing pages are landing pages of your ads. Ask yourself whether there is a strong headline and call to action. Also, make sure that all the clickable functions of the account are working correctly.

After all, although landing pages are external to Google Ads, they directly impact how the ad campaign performs. Furthermore, don’t forget to incorporate your target keywords into the ad copy to boost the quality score.

8. Reporting

Google Ads audit tools will help you in every step of the auditing process. Reviewing your ad account structure to identify what works best and compare grouped ads will help you take notes on all the areas that need improvement and optimisation. Using Google Ads data to generate actionable insights can help save money and identify underperforming keywords.

Using the data and metrics obtained in the form of audit reports, you can put together a solid plan of action to work on the underperforming areas of the ad campaign.

Best Google Ads Auditing Tools

Now that we’ve acquainted you with the concept, importance, and process of Google Ads auditing, it’s time to check out some of the best PPC audit tools.

1. Ads Audit Report

Google Ads Audit Report has been around in the digital marketing industry for a while now and has gained significant experience in PPC marketing. It’s an efficient auditing tool that can audit Google Ads accounts for advertisers, whether consultants or big agencies, within no time. You can access client accounts to detect new trends and review crucial data points.

All you have to do is sign up (for free), and you’ll get up to 5 detailed reports highlighting the areas that need focus and improvement, as highlighted in your search terms report. That said, let’s now take a look at the features Google Ads Audit Report offers:

• Ads inspection (landing page, ad copy, KPI)
• High-performing keyword analysis (keyword cloud, table breakdown)
• Impression share and trends over time (impressions, spend, clicks, CTR, cost per click)
• Data breakdown (conversions, impressions, spend, CPC, CTR)
• Comparison reports using a specific date range

2. Adalysis

Adalysis is another popular PPC auditing software that will help improve your Google Ads campaign through ad testing and performance monitoring. It automates the ad testing process, allowing advertisers to keep an eye on the entire Google AdWords account and be alert in case of mistakes or errors, including irrelevant keywords, keyword conflicts, broken links, and more.

You’ll get to run automatic A/B testing for numerous responsive search ads. And this ad rotation will enable you to identify and remove underperforming ads. Adalysis also aids in spotting duplicate keywords with its quality score analysis feature; it provides better insight into the quality and relevance of the website’s content (blog posts, articles, ads, etc.).

You can then use its set of algorithms and tools to boost the quality score of all your campaigns’ ads and ad extensions.

3. SEMrush

SEMrush offers various resources, including the SEM Toolkit, allowing you to track any website’s visibility improvement over a specific period of time. It also enables you to identify the keyword the site might be ranking on the SERPs and the page’s rank for the particular keyword.

Additionally, here are a few more beneficial features of this PPC auditing tool:

• Keyword research
• Account up-gradation for better flexibility and features
• Comparison of page performance against the competition
• Recommendations to improve organic traffic through content optimisation
• Identification of competitors ads’ keywords and ad copies

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics has paid and free versions to help advertisers optimise their successful Google Ads campaigns. It will compile and centrally locate all your data, and using the metrics, you may identify core areas of the ad groups that need improvement.

You could also use the free version of GA to understand and improve your Google AdWords account. It offers a variety of tools (Chrome extensions) to audit your advertising campaigns and ad extensions efficiently. Let’s take a look at some of these tools:

A) Chrome Tag Assistant Plugin:

This is ideal for beginner-level advertisers; it presents a list of tags on the blog page you might be working on, allowing you to record the analytics calls made while performing actions on the pages.

B) GA Debugger Plugin

After running a successful audit, the plugin shows you the GA work and every detail in real-time.

C) GA Health Checker

The GA Health Checker automates diagnostic tasks for each Audit, serving as one of the most valuable tools for conducting regular Google Ads audits in a month.

5. Optmyzer

Optmyzer is another exceptional Google AdWords account auditing tool capable of monitoring, optimising, and generating audit reports for a successful Google Ads campaign. Digital marketing specialists can use this software to build an ad campaign on the search network based on frequently used search terms.

Furthermore, its algorithms test and monitor the campaigns to provide insights and review opportunities. Optmyzer will also present customised, detailed reports to show the results of your PPC campaigns.

That said, it’s designed for advertisers and companies of sizes and offers a tonne of benefits to its users. Some of these features are as follows:

• Based on reports, it generates new and top-performing keyword suggestions
• Identifies the issues and then runs account audits to improve advertising campaigns
• Inspects and then understands the changes taking place in various campaigns
• Tests different ad copy variants and suggests tips for improvement
• Identifies low-performing ads and pauses them with a click

6. Shape ADI

The first step to automating the Google Ads audit process involves compiling all your ad campaign data in a single place. And with Shape’s Advertising Date Infrastructure ( Shape ADI), you can do just that. It aggregates and then stores your company’s current, previous, and cross-network PPC data in a data warehouse.

Using this unified information, you could run ad campaign settings and metrics against a range of checks. This will show whether you are meeting all your audit criteria.

Shape ADI also allows you to use free reporting tools such as Google Data Studio to build scalable auditing tools for clients and ad accounts. Before that, master the use of a detailed Google Ads Audit template to streamline your PPC auditing process.

7. Clever Audit

Clever Audit is a 100% safe and trustworthy auditing tool for advertisers; it’s designed to boost your Google Ads strategy with exceptional results. You can audit your ad campaign for free while suggesting valuable Google Ads experts’ recommendations and tips to optimise and improve performance until your goals are reached.

However, the best part about this Google Ads auditing software is that it can be used anywhere, including effectively capturing mobile traffic at home, in the office, or on the go. This is because its Google Ads analysis feature is designed to be displayed beautifully on mobile phones, tablets, and other such gadgets. So, you can boost your campaign performance with just a few clicks.

Key metrics like ad relevance, conversion rate, and quality score can have a major impact on your analysis process. Let the tool do all the hard work whilst you use this powerful tool to find the best ways to improve your Google Ads campaigns.

8. Wordstream Google Ads Performance Grader

Using Wordstream’s Google Ads Performance Grader, you can get your Google Ads account audited or analysed in less than a minute. You’ll be able to check how your ad campaign is performing against competitors. And with the help of the hints provided, you’ll be able to boost CTRs and your conversion rate in no time.

9. Adhawk

Two former Google employees founded Adhawk to analyse data and trends of particular ad groups. The campaign and channel management software draws the data from your paid AdWords account and then displays it in its dashboard, making it relatively easy to understand. Along with the data, it will suggest tips on improving the ad group performance to get more returns on your investment.

The only downside is that this is a paid platform; nonetheless, it ensures the desired audit reports through lead management, task management, keyword and conversion tracking.

10. Spaceboost

Spaceboost is an AI-powered bid and budget management tool that allows you to manage your channel and ad campaign. Ad campaigns and targeted keywords improve profitability through search ads conversion tracking, A/B testing, keyword analysis, and auditing. Furthermore, Spaceboost enables advertising companies to leverage client data for dynamic display campaigns, including video ads, across platforms such as Google and Bing for display ads.

Conclusion On Google Ads Auditing

While creating online advertising campaigns for your business or website, it’s crucial to have a comprehensive bid strategy in place that targets relevant keywords. Once you match your goal with this strategy, it will be easier to achieve the desired results.

Without the right auditing tools, advertising specialists won’t identify and eliminate the negative keywords in each ad group. They’ll also need to run audits to gain other insightful metrics, such as conversion rates and the number of clicks per click per ad, among other factors.

Should you require a detailed free Google Ads Audit, you may want to contact our team, and we will happily review your account and analyse your digital marketing efforts in-depth.

The information derived in reports is key to running successful Google Ads campaigns.

Danny Mahoney

As the accomplished head of web design at sitecentre®, Danny boasts an impressive career of 20+ years in web design and digital marketing. He employs a highly effective approach, harnessing user-behaviour metrics to enhance UX/UI to fuel conversion rates. Danny’s unique skill set allows him to deliver award-winning websites to SMBs at an unrivalled pace while maintaining superior results. His unique skills and vast experience make Danny a powerhouse in the industry.

Find them on their website: sitecentre®.