Spend is stable, conversions are down, and the monthly report explains nothing you can act on. You suspect waste but cannot point at it. A structured PPC account audit finds the leak in an afternoon, because underperforming accounts almost always fail in the same five places. Work through them in order and the pattern becomes obvious quickly.

Start Every PPC Account Audit With Tracking

Check measurement before touching anything else. Optimising against broken data produces confident, wrong decisions.

Open the conversions view and check what is marked as a primary conversion action. Page views, button clicks, and time on site frequently appear here and inflate results.

Look for duplicate conversion actions. Accounts that migrated between analytics setups often count the same event twice, which makes cost per conversion look half its real value.

Verify the conversion window. A thirty day window on a business with a four month sales cycle understates performance considerably.

Check whether enhanced conversions and server side tagging are configured, since browser restrictions erode standard tracking accuracy.

Confirm that offline conversions from the CRM flow back into the platform. Without that link, the algorithm optimises toward form fills rather than revenue.

Any PPC account audit that skips this step produces recommendations built on unreliable numbers.

The Search Terms Report Tells the Truth

Pull ninety days of search terms, sort by cost descending, and read the top hundred rows.

This single view usually reveals the largest waste in the account. Look for queries containing free, jobs, salary, course, DIY, and how to, none of which indicate purchase intent for most businesses.

Look for competitor brand names. Bidding on competitors can work deliberately, but it often happens accidentally through broad match and delivers expensive, low converting traffic.

Look for wrong geography. Location targeting set to presence or interest lets people researching your city from elsewhere trigger ads.

Look for the wrong product category entirely. Broad match with smart bidding expands aggressively, and accounts frequently end up paying for adjacent services they do not offer.

Calculate what percentage of spend went to terms that produced zero conversions in ninety days. In neglected accounts this figure is often uncomfortable, and it is the fastest saving available in any PPC account audit.

Then check whether a negative keyword list exists at all, and whether it is applied at account level or only inside one campaign.

Structure, Match Types, and Budget Pacing

Check whether branded and non branded search sit in the same campaign. Branded terms convert cheaply and hide weak performance everywhere else when blended.

Check language separation. Arabic and English need separate campaigns with separate budgets and landing pages, since mixing them makes performance unreadable.

Check match type distribution. Accounts running almost entirely on broad match with limited negatives will drift. Accounts running only exact match will starve for volume. Both extremes appear regularly.

Check for duplicate keywords competing across campaigns. They fragment data and complicate reporting without improving results.

Review budget pacing next. Any campaign flagged as limited by budget while meeting its efficiency target deserves more funding immediately. That is the simplest growth lever in a PPC account audit and one of the most commonly missed.

Check the opposite too. Campaigns consistently missing targets while consuming large budget share need reduction, not another round of ad copy tests.

Look at Performance Max campaigns carefully. Running them without a solid search campaign structure alongside frequently absorbs branded traffic and reports it as new performance.

Finally, check bid strategy fit. Target CPA on a campaign with very few monthly conversions will produce erratic results, because automated bidding needs data volume to work.

Ads and Landing Pages

Check ad strength and asset variety, but treat the platform's own rating as a guide rather than a target.

Read the actual ad copy. Does it mention price, location, and a specific reason to choose you, or does it repeat generic claims any competitor could copy?

Check whether headlines match the keyword theme in each ad group. Message mismatch between query, ad, and page is the most common cause of high cost per conversion.

Check ad extensions. Missing sitelinks, callouts, call extensions, and location extensions reduce visibility and click through rate at no additional cost.

Then click the ads yourself on a mobile device. Load speed, form length, and contact options all become obvious in thirty seconds of real use.

Check whether Arabic traffic reaches a properly built right to left page or a translated afterthought. This single issue undermines many otherwise well built accounts.

Red Flags in an Inherited Account

Watch for accounts where nobody has added a negative keyword in months. It signals no active management.

Watch for change history showing long gaps followed by bursts of activity before reporting deadlines.

Watch for reports built entirely on impressions, clicks, and click through rate with no mention of cost per qualified lead.

Watch for agencies unwilling to give you administrative access to your own account. Ownership should always sit with you.

Reviewing accounts under professional PPC Management Riyadh businesses rely on, the difference usually shows in weekly search term maintenance rather than in clever bidding tricks.

Schedule your next PPC account audit for ninety days out. Accounts drift, and quarterly review keeps the drift small.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I audit a PPC account?

Run a full audit quarterly and a light review monthly. Weekly search term checks matter more than any deep audit, because waste accumulates fastest through irrelevant queries. Newly launched accounts need weekly attention for the first two months.

Can I audit my own account without technical skills?

Yes, for the highest value checks. Reading the search terms report, verifying which conversion actions are primary, and clicking your own ads on mobile require no technical background. Tracking configuration and CRM integration usually need specialist help.

What is the fastest way to reduce wasted ad spend?

Sort search terms by cost, identify terms with spend but no conversions over ninety days, and add the irrelevant ones as negative keywords. Then pause the lowest performing quarter of campaigns by cost per qualified lead. Both actions take under an hour.