How to structure your Adwords.
If it is time to structure and expand the AdWords account for your business, your first step is to stay calm and remember that this is not as complex as it may initially appear. The structure of your AdWords account is likely to alter over time, which means you do not need to put too much pressure on yourself to ensure everything is perfect immediately.
The importance of structure
The structure of your AdWords account will allow you to regulate where, when and how you want your advertisements to be activated. Implementing a good structure will help to ensure that your advertisements are relevant to the search terms individuals are entering, improve your quality score, and ensure that you can successfully optimise your campaigns.
Key elements of your account structure
– Campaigns. The broadest category, you are likely to only have a few running at any one time.
– Ad groups. For each individual broad campaign, you will have more specific ad groups containing keywords.
– Keywords. An essential part of ensuring the ways in which your advertisement is activated, your keywords should match search queries undertaken by your target audience.
– Negative keywords. These will help you to avoid investing money unnecessarily into extraneous search terms.
– Ad text. The words that will be contained within your activated advertisements.
– Landing pages. The page on your website that individuals will be redirected to when they click on your advertisement.
Remembering that there will be a level of trial and error involved, here are the steps you should take to create a well-structured AdWords account for your business.
1. Consider your structure
There is no structural strategy that will work for every business. You may decide to structure your AdWords account in a similar way to your website, by the types of products or services you provide, or based on geographical location. Make sure you move forward with a structure that makes the most sense to you so that you can easily track your progress and maintain your account over time.
2. Keyword research
We cannot stress the importance of conducting detailed keyword research. You do not want to choose highly-competitive keywords or those that do not attract enough searches. Make sure you only select a few keywords to begin with to avoid confusion and overcrowding.
3. Implement your inaugural campaign
Identify the most important campaign on your list and get stuck in. Take time to check every setting – even if they seem insignificant – to avoid mistakes that may eat up a large portion of your budget.
4. Establish your ad group and ad text
You must ensure that you do not exceed character limits and that everything is highly relevant and meets Google’s guidelines.
5. Link your keywords to your ad group
Your list of between 10 and 20 keywords should be highly pertinent to your ad group.
6. Adjust and repeat
It is OK to celebrate, but be mindful that the process is not over. Adjusting your settings is a key part of the process – once you have triple-checked your settings, it is time to begin setting up your next campaign.