What a real PPC audit actually checks

By Sal, SS Consulting

Account structure, first

Before looking at any numbers, I look at how the account is organized: how campaigns are split, whether ad groups are tightly themed or a catch-all mess, and whether the structure actually matches how the business sells. A messy structure usually explains a lot of the performance problems on its own.

Conversion tracking

This is the single most common issue I find. If conversion tracking is missing, misconfigured, or counting the wrong actions as conversions, then every optimization decision made in that account, including by the automated bidding systems themselves, has been based on the wrong signal. Fixing broken tracking often matters more than any bid or budget change.

Keyword and audience match

On Google Ads, this means checking match types and search term reports for irrelevant traffic sneaking in, often through overly broad match keywords with no negative keyword list to filter them out. On Meta, it means checking whether audiences are broad enough to give the algorithm room to learn, without being so broad that budget gets spent on people who were never going to convert.

Budget and bid strategy

I look at whether budget is spread thin across too many campaigns to gather meaningful data, or concentrated enough to actually learn something. I also check whether the bid strategy matches the goal. A campaign optimizing for clicks when the actual goal is phone calls or form fills is a common mismatch.

The landing page

Traffic quality only matters if the page it lands on can convert it. I check whether the page matches what the ad promised, whether it loads quickly on mobile, and whether there's a clear, single next step for the visitor to take.

What you actually get from an audit

A real audit isn't a generic checklist score. It's a specific list of what's actually happening in your account, in plain language, with an honest answer about whether there's real opportunity to improve it or not. If there isn't much to fix, that's the answer you should get, not a manufactured list of problems to justify a sales pitch.