Google Ads guides & free tools
5 plain-English Google Ads guides for UK small businesses: what to spend, how to set up and run your campaigns, and how to pay less per click. Claim a free PPC audit and we’ll check your account for you, or work through our free Google Ads checklist and budget planner yourself. For your website and rankings, see our website guides and SEO guides.
All Google Ads guides
What to spend, how to run it and how to pay less per click, updated for 2026.
How much should you spend on Google Ads?
Realistic monthly budgets by industry, average UK CPCs, the minimum that works and how to calculate yours.
16 min readUpdated Nov 2026Read the guide
How to run Google Ads for a small business
Campaign setup, keywords, match types, ad copy, budgets, tracking and the mistakes that waste budget.
13 min readUpdated Nov 2026Read the guide
Quality Score explained
The three components, how Quality Score changes your cost per click and position, and 8 ways to improve it.
14 min readUpdated Nov 2026Read the guide
Rather a person checked your ads?
AI Max for Search: should you use it?
The feature replacing Dynamic Search Ads: what it changes and how to test it with the guardrails on.
8 min readUpdated Nov 2026Read the guide
Google Ads not getting clicks?
Seven checks in the order that finds the cause fastest: billing, approval, budget, bids, targeting, keywords and ad copy.
4 min readUpdated Oct 2026Read the guide
Want us to run the checks for you?
Our free PPC audit covers what the guides cover and more, inside your own account.
Free PPC audit
Add us with read-only access, so we can look but not change anything. Within 2 working days, you get a ranked list of fixes, most important first.
Google Ads, managed for you
Short on time to run your ads? Management plans start at £90 a month for 3 hours, plus your ad spend.
Free Google Ads tools
Quick sums and tracking links you can make yourself. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Google Ads budget calculator
Enter a monthly budget, your cost per click and your enquiry rate, and see the clicks, enquiries and cost per enquiry it could bring.
UTM link builder
Tag the links in your ads, emails and Google Business Profile, so GA4 shows where every visitor came from.
Free Google Ads checklist and budget planner
The checks and sums in the guides, step by step. Free, with no sign-up: work through them on screen or print them.
Google Ads checklist
A health check for your account in eight sections, from tracking and wasted spend to budget, landing pages and access.
Google Ads budget planner
Work back from the leads you want to a monthly and daily budget, in five steps with two worked examples.
Google Ads terms in plain English
The words you’ll see inside your account, in 20 words or fewer.
- CPC. Cost per click. What you pay Google each time someone clicks your ad.
- CTR. Click-through rate. The share of people who see your ad and click it. If yours is low, see Google Ads not getting clicks.
- Conversion rate. The share of clicks that turn into an enquiry, call or sale. If yours is low, see how to improve your website conversion rate.
- Cost per lead. Your ad spend divided by the number of leads it brought in.
- ROAS. Return on ad spend. Sales value divided by ad spend, used by online shops. See ecommerce ads.
- Quality Score. Google’s 1 to 10 rating of your keyword, ad and landing page. A higher score can lower your costs. Quality Score, explained.
- Search terms report. The real searches that triggered your ads. Check it weekly for waste.
- Negative keyword. A word that stops your ad showing, like “free” or “jobs”.
- Match types. How closely a search must match your keyword: broad, phrase or exact.
- Performance Max. A campaign type that shows your ads across Search, YouTube, Maps and more.
- Impression share. How often your ad showed, out of all the times it could have.
Questions about running your own ads
How do I know if my Google Ads are wasting money?
Start with the search terms report. It lists the real searches that triggered your ads, and any that would never become customers are wasted spend. Then check your tracking. If enquiries aren’t recorded, Google can’t tell good clicks from bad ones. Our Google Ads checklist covers the rest, or claim a free PPC audit and we’ll check for you.
How much should I spend on Google Ads?
Work back from the leads you want. Divide the leads you need by your conversion rate to get the clicks, then multiply by your cost per click. Our free Google Ads budget planner walks through this maths with worked examples. The free Google Ads budget calculator works it the other way: enter a budget and see the clicks and enquiries it could buy. As a starting point, we suggest at least £300 a month for local campaigns and £600 or more for UK-wide. See how we set budgets.
What’s the difference between the checklist and the free PPC audit?
You use the checklist to check your own account. With the free PPC audit, we check it for you, using read-only access so we can’t change anything. You get a ranked list of fixes within 2 working days. There’s no obligation to hire us afterwards, and the list is yours to keep.
Do I pay Google and an agency separately?
Yes. Your ad spend is paid straight to Google from your own account, so you own the account and its data. Our time is billed separately at £30 an hour. Management plans run from £90 a month for 3 hours (Ads Starter) to £300 a month for 10 hours (Ads Pro).
Rather we ran your ads for you?
You keep your own Google Ads account. We charge £30 an hour, with no tie-ins.