Nine quick wins ranked by impact: search term cleanup, ad extension upgrades, product title optimization, audience exclusions, geographic bid adjustments, ad schedule optimization, landing page speed fixes, review auto-applied recommendations, and conversion action audit.
1. Search Term Cleanup (30 minutes, high impact)
Pull your search terms report for the last 30 days. Sort by cost descending. Every query that spent more than $15 without converting gets added as a negative keyword. This usually cuts 10-20% of wasted spend immediately.
Look for patterns: informational queries ("how to," "what is"), competitor names you don't want to bid on, job-related terms ("salary," "hiring"), and freebie-seekers ("free," "coupon code," "discount"). Build a shared negative keyword list at the account level so these exclusions apply to all campaigns, including future ones.
Do this weekly for the first month, then biweekly. The wasted spend adds up fast when left unchecked. For more detail on this, see our 10 ROAS improvement tactics.
2. Upgrade Your Ad Extensions (20 minutes, medium impact)
Sitelink extensions, callout extensions, structured snippets, and price extensions all increase ad real estate and CTR without costing extra per click. Most accounts we audit have either no extensions or outdated ones.
Add at least 4 sitelinks (point to your best categories, sale page, new arrivals, and a trust page like reviews or guarantees). Add 4 callouts highlighting USPs (free shipping, 30-day returns, family-owned, etc.). Add price extensions for your top product categories.
Extensions typically improve CTR by 10-15%. Since Quality Score factors in CTR, better extensions can also lower your CPCs over time. This is free real estate in the search results.
3. Optimize Product Titles in Your Shopping Feed (1 hour, high impact)
Your product titles determine which searches trigger your Shopping ads. Front-load them with the search terms buyers actually use. "Women's Running Shoes Nike Air Zoom Pegasus Size 10 Black" outperforms "Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 40."
The pattern: [Product Type] + [Brand] + [Key Attribute] + [Size/Color]. This matches how people search. Do your top 20 products first (they probably account for 80% of your Shopping revenue), then work through the rest.
Stores that optimize their feed titles typically see 15-30% lower CPCs on identical products. The feed is free to fix and it compounds over time as Google better understands what you sell.
4. Add Audience Exclusions (15 minutes, medium impact)
If you're running remarketing or Performance Max campaigns, exclude past purchasers (or at least recent ones, last 30 days) from your prospecting campaigns. Otherwise you're paying to advertise to people who just bought from you.
On Meta, exclude purchasers from your prospecting ad sets. On Google, create a customer match list of buyers and exclude them from non-branded Search and Shopping campaigns. Keep them in remarketing campaigns where you're showing complementary products or replenishment reminders.
This one change can shift 5-10% of your budget from wasted impressions to genuinely new traffic.
5. Adjust Geographic Bids (20 minutes, medium impact)
Check your geographic performance report for the last 90 days. You'll almost certainly find states or regions that consistently underperform. Maybe shipping costs are higher there, or demand is just lower.
Set bid adjustments: +10-15% for your top 5 performing locations, -15-20% for the bottom 5. If any location has been below break-even ROAS for 90+ days with meaningful spend, consider excluding it entirely.
Also check your location settings. Make sure targeting is set to "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations," not "Presence or interest." The latter shows ads to people searching about your area but not actually there. For a deeper dive, check the 2026 advertising benchmarks by region.
6. Optimize Your Ad Schedule (15 minutes, low-medium impact)
Pull your hour-of-day performance report. Most ecommerce accounts see the best ROAS during evening hours (7pm-11pm) and the worst during early morning (2am-6am). Set bid modifiers accordingly.
Decrease bids by 20-30% during your worst 4-hour block. Increase by 10-15% during your best. Don't cut any time period entirely unless it consistently produces zero conversions with meaningful spend. The algorithm uses these signals, and cutting hours completely eliminates potential data.
7. Fix Landing Page Speed (1-2 hours, high impact)
Run PageSpeed Insights on your top 5 landing pages. If mobile scores are below 40, you're losing paid clicks to slow load times. Every additional second of load time costs you conversions you already paid for.
Quick speed fixes: compress images to WebP format (under 200KB each), lazy-load images below the fold, remove unused apps and their leftover scripts, and defer non-critical JavaScript. If you're on Shopify, review installed apps because each one adds JavaScript. Remove any you haven't used in 30+ days.
8. Review Auto-Applied Recommendations (10 minutes, defensive)
Google auto-applies certain recommendations unless you opt out. Check Settings > Auto-apply in your account. Common auto-applies that hurt performance: adding broad match keywords, raising budgets, and changing bid strategies.
Turn off auto-apply for anything that changes your targeting, bidding, or budget. Review recommendations manually and only apply what makes sense for your account. Google's recommendations are designed to increase spend, not necessarily profitability.
Check your change history too. If you see changes you didn't make, auto-apply is probably on. Undo anything harmful and disable it going forward.
9. Audit Your Conversion Actions (15 minutes, high impact)
Open Google Ads > Goals > Conversions. Check that you have exactly one primary purchase conversion action. Everything else (add to cart, begin checkout, page views) should be set to "Secondary" so they're tracked but don't influence bidding.
If you see duplicate purchase actions (common when both Google Ads tag and GA4 import are active), your ROAS is being double-counted. The algorithm thinks it's performing twice as well as it actually is, leading to overbidding. Fix this and your reported ROAS will drop, but your actual performance won't change. You'll just be seeing the real number now.
For a full tracking audit, run a free Google Ads audit to catch these issues automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions
The fastest wins are search term cleanup (add negative keywords for irrelevant queries), fixing conversion tracking accuracy, and adjusting device bid modifiers based on actual performance data. These can show results within 1-2 weeks.
Yes. Most of the quick wins in this list involve cutting waste rather than spending more. Negative keywords, placement exclusions, and geographic adjustments all redirect existing budget toward better-performing traffic.
Check search terms weekly, review campaign performance and make bid adjustments biweekly, and run a full account audit quarterly. Daily monitoring is fine for spend pacing but avoid making daily optimization changes because the algorithm needs time to learn.
Find Out What's Costing You
COREPPC's free audit checks your Google Ads and Meta accounts in 60 seconds. Get your performance score and see exactly where to improve.
Start Free Audit
