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Your Google Ads campaign structure allows you to control when and where your ads will appear. It ensures your ad shows at the appropriate moment to a relevant audience, leading to a better Quality Score, better results, and lower prices.

You can get all that from a good campaign structure.

However, several issues could come up if you cannot trace your triggers back to settings. On top of that, if you don’t know why things are happening, you won’t know how to adjust or optimize your Google Ads (previously “AdWords”) account.

From our experience with partners and readers, we know that these potential setbacks can seem daunting – to the point that they often fear dealing with the intimidating processes involved with Google Ads, search campaign structure, and other online advertisements.

So, before we even set up your account, let’s diffuse some of the confusion around Google Ads management.

When you understand how a proper Google Ads structure contributes to your marketing’s success, the fear will begin to fizzle.

Elements of an Effective Ad Structure

Let’s briefly review your ad campaign structure elements to make sure we’re all working from the same foundation.

Campaigns

Each campaign will have its ad group, keywords, and text ads connected to your landing pages. Most campaigns are divided into topics, and you can individually manage and prioritize those categories.

Ad Groups

This element is a tad more specific than campaigns. How many ad groups should there be in a campaign? You can technically create as many as you want, but you must always be keenly aware of how your budget is spread across them all.

Keywords

This element determines when your ad is triggered. When someone searches for the “[keyword],” and that term matches your entries, your ad will appear. Each word will have its own max CPC, match type, and quality score to indicate performance and guidelines.

Keyword research will help you understand keyword and negative keyword match types better. These exercises will help you know how to adjust your settings over time for optimal results.

Negative Keywords

Though most advertisers understand the importance of keywords, negative keywords can have just as much impact. Identifying these terms will prevent reeling in the wrong queries (and fees!). Keep an eye on the campaign’s performance to build the best negative keyword lists over time.

Ad Copy

This is the text that will be presented to your potential customers. Each ad group will have 2-3 ads that send searchers to your landing page. It’s crucial to test ad copy performance to determine which of them appeal to your ideal audience.

Keep in mind that, as a best practice, you should always include the keywords that trigger your ads in the headline, description, and landing page. This will help you increase your ad relevance and ranking. Read our latest blog on how to improve your ad ranking without increasing bids!

Landing Pages

The final element to your structure set up is the landing pages. Our strategists stress the importance of relevancy and optimization to landing pages for them to be effective. You may not think these pages are part of the ad, but it’s where you are directing your audience, and their experience will depend highly on what they see when they arrive on your site.

Strategist tip: If you have ad groups with numerous keywords, you can set landing pages at the keyword level, so your one-page website is highly relevant to your ad.

Setting Up Your Google Ads Campaign Structure

Creating a Google Ads account is not difficult. You have to follow a few steps to make sure everything is set up correctly.

1. Determine Your Account Structure

You have options to choose from, and narrowing the best one is part of the setup process. To determine this, consider the following factors:

• Website Structure: For best results, structure your website similarly to your ads dividing up tabs and pages accordingly.
• Products/Services: Organize your products and services in relevant bundles, so you can create ad groups that are highly relevant to them. Map out the details of products and services to get this right and promote the right information for search queries to come.
• Location: If the location is relevant, incorporate it into your structure.
• Budget: This is a huge one to consider as you structure your account. It would help if you always tried to have enough resources for each asset within your account.

2. Keyword Research

The keywords that you select add value to your campaign themes and ad groups. Our strategists recommend using terms that communicate a purchase intent and have a lower search volume.

Strategist Tip: Start with a small bundle of keywords per group, just over 10, to give each term a shot. Overcrowding won’t do much for you, and Google doesn’t like it. Watch each of these for match types as well. As you go, use Google’s Keyword Planner to help you tackle your list and document them in a spreadsheet for easy referencing.

3. Campaigns

You now have a structure and the keywords to fill it. Together, these will give you what you need to build your campaigns. Create your campaign from the highest priority to least important. As you advance, you should keep in mind that many budgets or triggering issues occur from mishaps during set-ups. QA the following features before moving forward:

Types

Your campaign will default to the type that runs. It’s best to decide where your text ads will show for yourself. Your choices will include:

• Search Network with Display Select: Default setting; Focus on reaching the most customers
• Search Network Only: Run on all Google search and search partner placements
• Display Network Only: Google network of search partner websites.
  Shopping: Great for creating local product listing ads

Locations & Languages

Double-check these points and make sure they are correct.

Bid Strategy

Your bidding strategy is highly dependent on your campaign goals. You may have to start with Manual CPC, and once you’ve collected enough data, switch to an automated strategy based on your goals (clicks, impression share, conversion, conversion value).

Note: Keep in mind that your max CPC does not mean that you will pay this amount in every keyword auction you participate in. You will spend around an additional cent to the second-highest bid. Check out the video below where we explain how the Google Ads keyword auction works!

Strategist tip: You can set your keyword bid at the ad group and keyword level. A great way to have higher control over your spend is to enable bids based on your keyword match types (i.e., bid higher for exact match type)

Budget

Once you have a monthly spend in mind, divvy it up per day and allocate it accordingly to your Google Ads campaign.

4. Ad Group & Ad Copy

Your Google Ad campaign structure will have ad groups that will divide up ads according to a strategy or topic.

Depending on the scenario, you can use single keyword ad groups with all match type variations. This strategy is used for easier management and to acquire a higher quality score.

The ad will require text and a destination URL. Consider the following points when creating your ad:

Text

• Three headlines with 30 characters limit
• Two descriptions with 90 characters limit
• Use numbers for special offers; they jump out at readers. You can use the countdown function to showcase limited time offers.
• Capitalize your text ad

Ad Approval

If you thought getting called out at work was annoying, try disapproved in Google Ads. It not only delays your ad, but it can affect your campaign performance negatively. Get acquainted with the guidelines, and do your best to follow the basics to avoid setting you back.

Landing Pages

Each ad will be focused on a particular service or product. Make sure that the landing page that you have selected for the ad reflects that. Not only will Google be discouraged by unrelated ads and landing pages, but when users get discouraged by the poorly routed ad, they are more likely to bail, affecting quality score and performance.

Strategist Tip: If your landing page URL is too long, you may want to use a “display path” to show users a customized URL that contains the keywords that triggered the ad.

5. Keywords to Ad Groups

Once the ads are created, you can add your keywords for optimized performance. Again, keep these terms:

• 5-10 keywords per group
• Keywords should be relevant to the ad group they belong to

A standard recommendation is running 2-3 ads per group to gauge each’s effectiveness. Tweak them slightly to learn from each of them. Highlight different points and adjust language for a somewhat different approach to each.

Get Going With Google Ads Now

We understand that it can be a little daunting and maybe a little fear-inducing to come at a Google Ads campaign from scratch. However, if you take the time to understand these elements and take a structured approach to the campaign, you’ll begin to come to grips with this powerful online marketing method.

Keep these crucial tips in mind as you set up your campaign structure and feel free to reach out to any of our strategists should you be inclined to learn more about PPC services and tools your agency can use
to sell and fulfill PPC.

Whether you’d like to add these services to your digital marketing portfolio or hire someone to do it for you, we can point you in the right direction with a quick call. For ongoing news, tips, and guides, follow
our blog.