Beyond the Click: The Ultimate Guide to GA4 Landing Page Audits for PPC

This is the most expensive problem in digital marketing.

You’ve done everything right. You spent days on keyword research. You crafted brilliant ad copy. You set up your Google Ads campaign, and the clicks are rolling in. Your “Cost Per Click” (CPC) looks great.

There’s just one problem: Nobody is converting.

Your budget is evaporating, and you have nothing to show for it. This is the “leaky bucket” syndrome. You’re pouring expensive traffic (the water) into a landing page (the bucket) that is full of holes.

The click is not the goal. The conversion is.

In the old days of Universal Analytics, diagnosing this was clunky. But now, with Google Analytics 4, we have a powerful diagnostic toolkit. You just have to know how to use it.

It’s time to go “beyond the click.” This is the ultimate, 5-step guide to performing GA4 landing page audits that will find exactly where your PPC traffic is leaking, so you can finally fix it.

The Pre-Audit: You Can’t Audit What You Don’t Track

Before you open a single report, your audit is useless if your data collection is broken. A quick “health check” is mandatory.

Ask yourself these two questions:

Are My Key Conversions Set Up? Go to Admin > Data display > Conversions. Do you see your most important events (e.g., generate_lead, purchase, form_submission) toggled ON as conversions? If not, you’re flying blind.
Am I Tracking “Micro-Conversions”? A user might not fill out the form, but did they engage? Tracking micro-conversions is the secret to a good audit. These are events like:
- scroll_depth (e.g., a user who scrolled 90% of the way down)
- video_play (e.g., a user who watched your product demo)
- file_download (e.g., a user who downloaded your case study)

These micro-conversions tell you if the user was interested but failed to take the final step. This is the first clue in your GA4 landing page audit.

With this setup, you’re ready to find the leaks.

Step 1: Isolate Your “Problem Children” (The Landing Page Report)

Your first step is to filter out the noise. You don’t care about your blog traffic or your organic traffic right now. You care about one thing: your paid traffic.

Go to Reports > Engagement > Landing Page.
By default, this report shows you all traffic. We need to filter it.
At the top of the report, click Add filter +.
Build your filter:
- Dimension: Session source / medium
- Match Type: contains
- Value: cpc (This will grab google / cpc, bing / cpc, etc.)
Click Apply.

You are now looking at a clean list of only the landing pages your PPC campaigns are sending traffic to.

Scan this report. Look for the “Big 3” metrics for each page:

Sessions (or Users)
Engagement rate
Conversions (or Conversion rate)

You will immediately see your “problem children”: pages with high traffic but low engagement and abysmal conversion rates.

These are the pages you will audit. Pick one, and let’s move to Step 2.

Step 2: Diagnose the “First Impression” (Engagement Metrics)

The user clicked your ad. They landed on the page. What did they do in the first 5 seconds?

This is where you’ll find your biggest, most obvious problems. On your filtered Landing Page report, look at these two metrics for your problem page:

Engagement Rate: This is the new “Bounce Rate.” A low engagement rate (e.g., under 15-20% for a landing page) is a massive red flag. It means users landed, felt an immediate disconnect, and left.
Average Engagement Time: If this number is under 10 seconds, users aren’t even reading your main headline. They’re landing, scanning, and bailing.

What This Tells You:

A low engagement rate points to a “Page-Message Mismatch.” This is the #1 killer of PPC campaigns.

It means the promise of your ad (e.g., “50% Off Spring Sale”) does not match the reality of your landing page (e.g., a generic homepage with no sale in sight). The user feels tricked or confused and leaves instantly.

The Fix: Your ad’s headline, offer, and “scent” must be perfectly mirrored on the landing page. The user should see the exact same keywords and offer “above the fold” the second the page loads.

Step 3: Build a “Path Exploration” to See Where They Go (Instead)

Okay, so some users do engage. They land, they don’t bounce… but they still don’t convert.

Where are they going?

Don’t guess. Use GA4’s Path Exploration to get the answer.

Go to the Explore tab and start a new Path exploration.
On the far-left “Variables” column, click the + on “Dimensions” and import:
- Landing page + query string
- Page title and screen name
- Event name
In the center “Tab Settings” column, click the “Starting point” box and select Landing page + query string.
A list of your pages will appear. Find your problem PPC landing page (e.g., /ppc-service-page) and click it.
Now, look at the “Step +1” column. This is a literal map of what users did after landing on your page.

What This Tells You:

This report is where you’ll have your “Aha!” moment.

Are they all going to your “About Us” page? This is a massive trust issue. Your landing page is missing key trust signals (reviews, testimonials, case studies, “As Seen On”), and users are leaving to find out if you’re a real company.
Are they going to your “Pricing” page and then leaving? Your landing page offer is unclear, or your price is a shock. You’re not “selling” the value before you show the price.
Are they going back to your “Homepage”? Your landing page isn’t specific enough. They’re confused about what you do and are trying to start over.
Are they just “dropping off”? This is the end of the line. They didn’t find anything relevant and left your site.

The Fix: If users are “escaping” to find trust or clarity, you must add those elements to the landing page. Add a testimonial block. Add a clear “How It Works” section. Add your pricing, or at least a “starting at” price, to pre-qualify.

**Step 4: Build a “Funnel Exploration” to Find the Exact Leak**

This is the most surgical tool in your GA4 landing page audit. It’s perfect for pages with a clear, multi-step process, like an e-commerce checkout or even just a “scroll-to-form” page.

Let’s build a funnel for a simple lead-gen page.

Go to Explore > Funnel exploration.
In the “Tab Settings” column, under “Steps,” build your funnel.
Step 1:session_start
- Click “Add filter”: Landing page > exactly matches > /your-ppc-landing-page
Step 2:scroll
- Click “Add filter”: Event parameters > percent_scrolled > greater than > 75 (This tracks users who scrolled 75% of the way down).
Step 3:form_start (This is a custom event you should set up!)
- This tracks users who clicked into your form.
Step 4:generate_lead
- This is your final conversion event.

What This Tells You:

GA4 will give you a beautiful bar chart showing the exact drop-off at each step.

Huge drop from Step 1 to 2? Users aren’t scrolling. Your above-the-fold content is failing. Your headline or hero image isn’t compelling them to learn more.
Huge drop from Step 2 to 3? They scrolled all the way down, read your offer… and hated your form. You have too many fields. You’re asking for their phone number, and it’s scaring them off.
Huge drop from Step 3 to 4? They started the form but didn’t finish. Is your “Submit” button broken? Is there a validation error? Is the form timing out?

The Fix: This report tells you exactly what to A/B test. If the drop-off is at Step 2, test a new headline. If it’s at Step 3, test a form with two fields instead of seven.

Step 5: Segment Your Audience (Is It the Page or the Person?)

One final, critical step. Sometimes, the page is fine… for some people. Your problem isn’t the page itself; it’s that it’s broken for a huge segment of your audience.

In your Landing Page report (from Step 1), use the Add comparison button at the top.

Set up these two comparisons immediately:

Device (Mobile vs. Desktop):
- Dimension = Device category
- Value = Mobile vs. Desktop
- What to look for: This is the most common culprit. You’ll see something like a 10% conversion rate on Desktop but a 0.1% rate on Mobile. This is a five-alarm fire. It means your page is unusable on a phone. The form is probably broken, the “Submit” button is off-screen, or it takes 15 seconds to load.
New vs. Returning Users:
- Dimension = User type
- Value = New user vs. Returning user
- What to look for: If returning users convert well but new users never do, this confirms your “trust” issue from Step 3. Returning users already trust you. New users are landing cold and not seeing the social proof they need.

The Fix: If mobile is broken, stop reading this article and go fix it. You are burning money. If new users aren’t converting, your #1 priority is to A/B test adding a block of your best five-star reviews right above your form.

Conclusion: From “Clicks” to “Conversions”

Running PPC without performing GA4 landing page audits is like driving with your eyes closed. You’re just pointing in a direction and hoping for the best.

This 5-step playbook gives you X-ray vision. You no longer have to guess.

Your data is telling you a story:

Low Engagement Rate = Your ad-to-page message is wrong.
Path “Escapes” to “About Us” = Your trust is wrong.
Funnel Drop-off = Your form or CTA is wrong.
Mobile vs. Desktop Difference = Your experience is wrong.

Stop focusing on the click. Start focusing on what happens after. That’s where the real ROI is.

*(Internal Link / CTA): A/B testing, GA4-driven insights, and landing page optimization are at the core of our PPC philosophy. If you want a team of experts to stop your ad-spend leaks for good, contact us for a free, no-obligation PPC and landing page audit today.*