Free PPC Account Audit Checklist

A real PPC account audit checks five things: whether the account structure actually makes sense, whether conversion tracking is accurate, whether negative keywords are keeping out irrelevant clicks, whether your ads are actually relevant to the keywords they’re tied to, and whether your landing page matches what the ad promised. This is the same checklist, not a shortened version of it.

You can run this yourself in about twenty minutes with access to your own account. Nothing below is held back to make a call feel necessary, if working through this convinces you everything’s actually fine, that’s a good outcome too.

Account Structure

Poor structure is usually invisible until you go looking for it, and it quietly makes everything else on this list harder to fix.

• Every campaign follows a naming pattern you, or anyone else looking at the account, could understand in under a minute
• Branded and non-branded search terms sit in separate campaigns, not blended into one
• No two campaigns are competing against each other for the same keywords
• Ad groups are tightly themed, ideally one product, service, or intent per ad group, not a single ad group covering everything you offer
• Budget is distributed based on what’s actually performing, not spread evenly out of habit

Conversion Tracking

If this is broken, everything downstream in this checklist can look wrong when it isn’t, so it’s worth confirming before you judge anything else.

• In Tools & Settings, then Conversions, every conversion action shows “Recording conversions,” not “No recent conversions” or a tag warning
• The conversion action fires on the real outcome, a submitted form or a completed purchase, not just a page loading, since a page-load trigger can report success even when nobody actually converted
• Conversion values, if you’re tracking them, reflect what a lead or sale is actually worth to you, not a placeholder number nobody’s updated
• You’ve personally run a test conversion recently to confirm the whole path works end to end

Negative Keywords

• The search terms report has been reviewed in the last 30 days, not just once when the account was first built
• Obviously irrelevant or low-intent searches that triggered your ads have been added as negatives
• There’s a negative keyword list applied at the account or campaign level, not negatives added one at a time inside individual ad groups
• Broad match keywords specifically have been checked for search terms that drifted from what you actually intended to target

Ad Relevance

Google is comparing your keyword, your ad copy, and your landing page as one chain. A weak link anywhere in that chain hurts the others.

• Your actual keywords appear somewhere in your ad headlines, not just implied by a generic phrase
• Each ad group is built around one specific theme, not a wide mix of loosely related keywords your ad copy can’t possibly speak to all at once
• The ad matches where someone likely is in their decision, research-stage language for exploratory keywords, ready-to-buy language for high-intent ones

Landing Page Match

• The page someone lands on actually matches what the ad promised, not a generic homepage
• The page loads quickly on mobile, where most local searches happen
• There’s one clear next step on the page, not three competing calls to action
• Basic trust signals, a phone number, an address, or reviews, are visible without scrolling

If you’ve worked through all five sections and want a second set of eyes to confirm what you found, or you’d rather have someone else run this for you, book your free audit and we’ll do the full pass ourselves.

Frequently Asked Questions