A PPC (Pay-Per-Click) audit is a comprehensive analysis of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns to assess their performance, identify areas for improvement, and develop strategies to optimize your advertising spend. Many digital marketing agencies and PPC professionals offer paid PPC audit services, but if you’re looking for a free PPC audit, you can conduct a basic self-assessment using the following steps:

Review Campaign Objectives:

Start by clarifying your campaign goals and objectives. What are you trying to achieve with your PPC campaigns? Common goals include increasing website traffic, generating leads, or driving online sales.
Analyze Account Structure:

Examine how your PPC account is structured. Are campaigns and ad groups organized logically? Are you using relevant keywords and ad copy for each group?
Check if there are any unnecessary duplicate keywords or ad groups.
Keyword Analysis:

Evaluate the performance of your keywords. Identify high-performing keywords that drive conversions and low-performing keywords that might be draining your budget.
Look for negative keywords that could be added to improve targeting.
Ad Copy and Creatives:

Review your ad copy and creatives. Are they compelling and relevant to your target audience? Do they include strong calls to action (CTAs)?
Identify ad variations that are performing well and consider creating more similar ads.
Quality Score Assessment:

Check the Quality Scores of your keywords. Low Quality Scores can lead to higher costs and lower ad rankings.
Identify ways to improve Quality Scores, such as refining ad relevance and landing page experience.
Ad Extensions:

Review your use of ad extensions. Are you taking advantage of all available extensions (sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, etc.) to enhance your ads and provide more information to users?
Landing Page Analysis:

Evaluate the landing pages linked to your ads. Are they optimized for conversions and aligned with ad messaging?
Ensure that landing pages load quickly and are mobile-friendly.
Geographic and Device Targeting:

Assess your geographic and device targeting settings. Are you effectively reaching your target audience based on location and device preferences?
Budget and Bidding Strategy:

Analyze your budget allocation and bidding strategy. Are you overspending on underperforming campaigns or keywords?
Consider adjusting your bidding strategy based on campaign objectives.
Conversion Tracking:

Ensure that conversion tracking is correctly implemented. This allows you to measure the success of your campaigns.
Verify that goals or e-commerce tracking is set up properly in your analytics platform.
Competitive Analysis:

Research your competitors’ PPC strategies. Identify opportunities to differentiate your ads and stay competitive.