Optimising Google Ads campaigns: a monthly checklist
A perfectly launched campaign decays without regular attention — the market and competitors change faster than it seems. Here's what to check every month.
Week one: search terms and negatives
Open the search terms report for the last 30 days and note every query that got clicks but produced zero conversions over a reasonable period — usually 10-15 clicks with no result is enough to decide on exclusion.
Add new negative keywords at account level if the phrasing is irrelevant to the whole business, or at the specific campaign level if it's a narrow case.
Check for keyword overlap between your own campaigns — if one campaign outbids another on similar queries, it's a sign the structure needs rebuilding.
Week two: ads and quality score
Check which ads within groups show 'below average' CTR status relative to others in the same group, and replace them with new variants instead of leaving weak copy running for months.
Check ad extensions for currency: has the phone number changed, do sitelinks still work, do callouts match current promotions and product range.
Assess quality score on the highest-spend keywords — if it's dropped, look for the cause in falling ad relevance rather than raising the bid to compensate for a lost position.
Week three: bids and budget
Compare actual spend per campaign against planned budget — campaigns that systematically underspend lose potential traffic, while overspending campaigns need either a higher cap or an analysis of the overspend cause.
Check device, time and geography bid adjustments against current data — audience behaviour shifts over time, and adjustments set six months ago may no longer apply.
For automated-bidding campaigns, check that the target hasn't been changed too sharply — abrupt CPA or ROAS edits confuse the algorithm and reset the campaign into a new learning phase.
Week four: conversions and landing pages
Cross-check the number of conversions logged in Google Ads against the real enquiry count sales actually sees — a mismatch above 10-15% signals a tagging problem worth investigating.
Check main landing page mobile load speed using Google's built-in tools — a speed drop over the month from new site elements directly hits ad conversion.
Manually walk the user path on at least one landing page per active campaign: the form still works, buttons go where they should, contact details are current.
What to do with the month's findings
Log three to five key changes made during the month and their effect on core metrics — this builds a decision history without which, six months on, it's impossible to know what worked and why.
Don't make every edit at once — one change at a time with a pause to gather data lets you tell which decision actually moved the result rather than guessing after the fact.
Plan the next month accounting for seasonality and upcoming business promotions — a checklist works better when it's partly proactive rather than purely reactive.