Structuring your Google Ads campaigns correctly
Building a Google Ad campaign account is not as frightening as you may assume. It is true that the interface may pose some navigation challenges, but with the right guidance, you should not encounter any major issues. Keep in mind that your account structure is not a permanent thing. The structure will continue to evolve as time goes by.
What Does Proper Structuring Involve?
You need to have a good understanding of all the components involved in the account structure before you get started with the creation process. The following are a few basics:
1. Campaigns
Unless you happen to have and operate a very big account, the chances are that your campaigns will surround certain themes. Each will have its unique groups that contain keywords tied to the text ads. The keywords will then provide direction to all your landing pages.
Generally, you should consider choosing campaign topics based on the process you want to follow when dividing your marketing budget. Remember that you will set the budget at this level.
2. Ad Groups
Each campaign will have its set of ad groups. The groups are often more specific at this level. The thing to note is that there is no set minimum or a maximum number of groups under each campaign. However, it is always best to create as many groups as you can, as this helps in ensuring that the budget is stretched across various ad groups.
It is the surest way to ensure that landing pages, ads, keywords, and ad groups will not suffer. An ad group should have between ten and twenty keywords, with each keyword triggering between two to three text ads. The text ads should then provide direction to the landing pages.
3. Keywords
The keywords will need to fall under each Ad group. Keywords are essential in that they control how each ad gets triggered. Whenever a user types in a word in the search box provided by a search engine, the term used by the user is referred to as the “search query.”
The search query will then get matched with a given keyword that will then trigger the ad. Each keyword needs to have a quality score, match type, and Max CPC tied to it. You, therefore, need to conduct thorough keyword research before choosing the keywords to use.
4. Ad Text
This refers to actual text that will get displayed when the ad gets triggered. Always make sure that each ad group contains between two to three ads pointing to a single page. Try and follow the AdWords guidelines to ensure that your ads will get approved.
5. Landing Pages
The landing page is the destination were each ad directs the researcher. Normally, the landing page will have a call to action or offering based on what the client is looking for. Your landing pages ought to be strategic. Make sure that each Ad directs the researcher/s to relevant pages on your website.
Are There Mistakes That Are Best Avoided?
It is possible to use AdWords to ramp up your web traffic. But often, it is the simple mistakes you do that ends up sending visitors to the wrong section of your website. The following are common mistakes to avoid:
1. Not Using SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups)
All web owners want to get the top spot on the SERPs. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Traditionally, you will find that the top 3 paid ad spots for every keyword tend to get 41 percent of all the clicks received on that page.
But for you to get to the top, you will need to have a good understanding of keyword targeting. Ideally, consider using a single keyword for every available ad group. This will require you to pull your best-performing keywords and try to organize them using a different approach.
2. Failure to Use Negative Keywords
When using AdWords, you need to bid on the keywords for you to reach more people. But this does not mean that you need to pay for the keywords. On the contrary. Here, you will need to pay for the search terms.
There is a major difference between the two which is something that many people do not realize. A negative keyword makes it easier for you to control the search terms that you intend to pay for in your campaign.
The negative keywords are those keywords that wouldn’t ordinarily make sense to your ordinary audience. They would also not help bring you the leads that you are after.
Their main job is to inform AdWords not to display your advertisement for any user queries containing that set of keywords.
What Hints and Tips Are Available?
If you have tried running AdWords for any period, it is always best to ensure that you conduct a full audit every once in a while. The following are hints and tips to remember:
1. Make sure that your account is properly structured. Go through your ad groups, number of keywords per group, and also check the number of ads included in each ad group.
2. Select the best devices to display the ads on. Google is no longer providing you with an option to produce ad groups specifically targeting mobile owners. You will, however, come across numbers that can help you decide whether to display the ads to mobile audiences or not.
3. Identify your best networks. You will need to go through your search partner network numbers for this particular point.
4. For efficiency, make sure you use keyword match types
5. Take your time to compare each advert to the landing page that it is directing users to. You need to do this to check whether the landing pages are helping with the conversion numbers.
Conclusion
As explained above, you will need to use a few ad groups for each campaign to ensure that the keywords are properly spread out to all your campaign subsets. Go through the structure creation process and the mistakes to avoid to keep building upon a good ad campaign account structure.
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