A PPC account audit template structures your review across campaigns, keywords, ad copy, landing pages, bid strategy, and conversion tracking. Building and applying a consistent framework helps you spot wasted spend, neglected opportunities, and configuration errors before they compound.
Start with a header block that captures account metadata: client name, account ID, audit date, auditor name, and platform (Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta). Next, create sections for campaign inventory, keyword analysis, ad copy review, landing page alignment, bid strategy evaluation, and conversion tracking validation. Each section holds a table or checklist with rows for specific items to inspect.
The campaign inventory section lists every active and paused campaign, its type (Search, Display, Shopping, Performance Max), budget, lifetime spend, and current status. This gives you a one-page overview and reveals orphaned campaigns still burning budget. The keyword section breaks out by match type, showing impression share, average CPC, Quality Score distribution, and any keywords with zero conversions above a spend threshold you define. Ad copy rows capture headline and description variants, their CTR relative to account average, and whether they include location or offer specificity. Landing page entries check for load speed issues, mobile usability errors, and whether the page content matches the ad promise. Bid strategy rows note whether campaigns use manual CPC, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, or portfolio strategies, and flag any that lack sufficient conversion volume for automated bidding. Conversion tracking validation confirms that primary actions fire correctly, match GA4 goals, and exclude junk conversions like bot submissions.
Search query reports expose what users actually typed before clicking your ads, often revealing irrelevant terms that drain budget. In the template, create a worksheet tab dedicated to search queries. Export the last 30 or 90 days of queries sorted by cost, then categorize each row: relevant and converting, relevant but not converting, or irrelevant. Mark irrelevant queries as candidates for negative keyword addition at the campaign or account level.
For each negative keyword candidate, note the match type you will apply—phrase match catches most variants without over-blocking, while exact match is safer if the term occasionally appears in valid contexts. If the account serves bilingual regions like Quebec, run the search query report separately for French campaigns to catch language-specific irrelevant terms. Many accounts neglect French negative keywords, letting spend leak on mistranslated or culturally mismatched queries. Document the estimated monthly waste per irrelevant query cluster by multiplying average CPC by click volume, then sum these to show total recoverable budget. This quantification makes the negative keyword section one of the highest-impact parts of the audit and justifies immediate action.
Examine whether campaigns are organized logically—by product line, geography, match type, or funnel stage—and whether budget flows to the best performers. In the template, list each campaign's daily budget, its percentage of total account spend, and its cost per acquisition or ROAS. Flag any campaign spending above 20 percent of the account total with a below-average ROAS, since this indicates misallocated budget.
Check for single-keyword campaigns or overly granular splits that fragment data and prevent machine learning from optimizing effectively. Conversely, identify mega-campaigns mixing brand and non-brand keywords, which obscure performance and waste brand budget on cheap clicks that would convert anyway. Note shared budgets and whether they cause high-priority campaigns to be starved when lower-priority campaigns exhaust the pool early in the day. For Canadian accounts targeting multiple provinces, confirm that geo-specific campaigns have appropriate budget weights—Toronto and Vancouver typically command higher spend than smaller markets, but verify this aligns with actual conversion rates per region. If you find a Prairie-focused campaign outperforming a GTA campaign on ROAS, document the reallocation opportunity and projected impact on overall account efficiency.
Ad copy quality directly affects CTR and Quality Score, which in turn determine CPC and ad rank. In the template, create a table listing each ad group, the number of active ads, and whether they use all available headline and description slots. Note any ads with CTR more than 30 percent below the account average and mark them for rewrite or pause. Check that responsive search ads include pinned headlines only when necessary, since over-pinning reduces Google's ability to test combinations.
Review ad extensions separately: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call extensions, and location extensions. Confirm that every campaign has at least four sitelinks and three callouts, and that these are specific rather than generic. For Canadian businesses, verify that call extensions display the correct local or toll-free number and that location extensions pull accurate addresses from the Google Business Profile. If the account targets both English and French audiences, ensure that French ad copy is not a machine translation but properly localized, and that extensions carry French CTAs where required. Flag any ad group where all ads share identical copy, which suggests the account was cloned without customization and misses an opportunity to test messaging angles.
A mismatch between ad promise and landing page content kills conversion rate, no matter how well the campaign is optimized upstream. In the template, create a row for each unique landing page URL receiving traffic. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights or a similar tool to record mobile and desktop scores, and flag pages below 50 on mobile as high-priority fixes. Check that the headline on the page echoes the ad headline or includes the primary keyword, and that the CTA is above the fold.
Conversion tracking validation requires testing each goal: submit a form, complete a purchase, or trigger a phone call, then confirm the conversion appears in Google Ads and GA4 within the expected window. Document any goals that fire on thank-you page loads without server-side validation, since these count bot traffic and inflated numbers mislead bidding algorithms. For lead-generation accounts, verify that CRM integration passes lead quality data back to Google Ads via offline conversion import or the Conversions API, enabling the platform to optimize for high-value leads rather than raw form fills. Note any campaigns using a default conversion action when a more specific action exists, which often happens when new campaigns are cloned from old templates. Fixing these tracking gaps immediately improves bid strategy accuracy and prevents months of misoptimized spend.
Once the template is filled, sort findings by estimated impact and implementation effort. Quick wins—adding negative keywords, pausing underperforming ads, fixing broken conversion tags—should be actioned within the first week. Medium-effort items like restructuring campaigns or rewriting ad copy get scheduled for the following month. Long-term improvements such as landing page redesigns or bid strategy migration require stakeholder buy-in and a phased rollout.
Present the audit as a prioritized roadmap, not a laundry list. Group recommendations into themes: waste reduction, coverage expansion, message refinement, and technical fixes. For each theme, show the current state, the proposed change, and the expected outcome in plain language. This structure helps non-technical stakeholders understand why the changes matter and builds support for budget or resource requests. Save the completed template as a baseline for the next quarterly audit. Compare the new audit against the previous one to track whether recommendations were implemented, whether performance improved as expected, and whether new issues have emerged. This longitudinal view turns the template into a living diagnostic tool rather than a one-time snapshot.
Campaign structure and budget allocation, keyword performance and match type distribution, search query reports and negative keyword gaps, ad copy and extension completeness, landing page relevance and speed, bid strategy alignment, and conversion tracking accuracy. Additional sections for shopping feeds, audience targeting, or ad scheduling depend on account type.
Quarterly audits catch drift and confirm that prior recommendations were implemented. High-spend accounts or those in volatile industries benefit from monthly lightweight checks focused on search queries and budget pacing, with deeper structural reviews every three months.
Yes, but add platform-specific rows for features unique to each. Microsoft Advertising has LinkedIn profile targeting and different audience network options; Google has Performance Max and YouTube. Shared sections like keyword analysis and conversion tracking apply to both with minor column adjustments.
Include checks for bilingual ad copy and keyword coverage if targeting Quebec, validate geo-targeting settings for each province, confirm that location extensions pull accurate Canadian addresses, verify currency is set to CAD, and ensure call extensions display local or toll-free numbers appropriate to each region.
Focus the core template on the account's own data to keep it actionable and auditable. You can add a supplementary tab for competitive insights—auction insights reports, ad preview observations, landing page comparisons—but separate it from the main diagnostic sections to avoid scope creep.
Sort by potential waste or revenue impact first, then by implementation effort. Negative keyword additions and broken conversion tags are high-impact, low-effort. Campaign restructures or landing page overhauls are high-impact but require more time. Pause or defer low-impact items until higher priorities are resolved.