How to Structure Your Google Ad Groups Like A Professional

Online marketing is key to the survival of any business. To do that, you’ll need to utilize Google Ads. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Navigating Google Ads is quite difficult. For many of us, it feels like being asked to explain E=mc² and that’s not an exaggeration. Ok, maybe a little bit but it can definitely be intimidating to the uninitiated. Fortunately, there’s room to learn and guides to help you every step of the way. Which is exactly what this is. We’ll walk you through each step of the way. Hopefully, at the end of our guide, you’ll be structuring your Google Ads account like a pro.

Why is the structure of your Google Ads account so important?

Some of you may be asking, what’s the deal with the structure of your Google Ads account. Why can’t we just teach you how to create ad groups? Well, with a properly structured account, you will be able to ensure that your ads are triggered when you want them to be and appear where you want them to show. You want to make sure that your ads only show to your target audience – people who are searching specifically for your product or service. You don’t want your ads getting triggered and the audience finding them irrelevant to their search.

Without a proper structure, you’re also less likely to be able to optimize and get better results. This is because, it’s more likely that you’ll get lost in the disorganization of your ad groups. You’ll have a hard time figuring out which keywords are working well and track your performance effectively. It’ll also be more difficult to pinpoint any problems. Think of a room full of clutter. How are you ever going to find anything without spending a lot of time rummaging through every messy pile? Managing your Google Ads account should not make you miserable. It should be easy to navigate, optimize, and execute.

More importantly, well-structured Google Ads accounts are more likely to get better quality scores. Yup, Google actually rates the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages.  And higher quality scores can result in lower prices (who doesn’t want that?) and better ad positions. In short, you want to ensure high quality ads and that only happens if you have an organized Google Ads account.

Components of a Google Ads Account:

Before you start building an account, you need to have a basic understanding of its components. It’s like building a house. You can’t just start getting whatever tools and materials you can avail of in the hardware store. You need to know how each material and tool works. And how they contribute to the building of a house.

Campaigns

Most small to medium-sized businesses will usually only have a few campaigns in their account. Each campaign will have a certain goal. Within a campaign, you’ll have ad groups which contain keywords that are associated with your ads and linked to your landing page.

Ad groups

As we’ve already mentioned, each campaign will have a few ad groups that are relevant to the campaign type. It is recommended that you only have a maximum of 7 to 10 ad groups in your campaign. In each ad group, you should have no more than 10 to 20 keywords and 2 to 3 ads.

Keywords

In each ad group, you have keywords that will trigger your ads and, when clicked, direct the customer to your landing page. So, what is a keyword? When a person searches on Google, the words typed in the search box is matched to a keyword which triggers an ad. Take note that keywords are not the search queries. A person can input “pet supplies” in the search box and, depending on your match type, it can trigger an ad linked to the keyword “pet medicine.”

Negative Keywords

While keywords make sure that your ad is shown when matched with a search query, negative keywords make sure that search queries not relevant to your business do not trigger your ads and waste precious money in your PPC budget.

Ad text

This is the actual text that shows up in your ad when it is triggered. Within each ad group, you should have 2 to 3 ads that are linked to the same landing page.

Landing Pages

These are pages on your website that you want to drive consumers to. Obviously, you want to make sure that the landing pages directly linked to your ads show information, an offering, and/or a call-to-action that is relevant to the customer. A hyper-relevant landing page increases the chances of conversion, increases your quality score, and lowers your cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition.

Steps to Structuring your Ad Groups:

1. Choose your campaign type and settings

Laying the right foundation is key to a well-structured Google Ads account. Which means that you’ll need to make sure that you choose the right campaign types for your business. The right campaign types will depend on the goals you want to achieve.

If you want your ads to find customers that are looking for the product/service that you provide, you should create a search campaign. If you want to get calls for your business, you should choose a call-only campaign. For building brand awareness, display campaigns work best. Remarketing campaigns are perfect for re-engaging previous visitors or customers of your website.

The next step is to consider the settings of your campaign which are location, language, bid strategy, and budget. Are you targeting certain locations to promote your business? Maybe you have three branches of your beauty salon in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego and you want to advertise only to those who live within a particular radius. What about language? Are you targeting different regions around the world or a specific group within a region?

Campaigns can also be created based on the time and day you want the ads to appear such as weekends. You can also base your campaigns on holidays to accommodate your seasonal promotions such as Christmas, Black Friday, and Spring sales.

Pro-Tip: make sure to name your campaigns, include the type, theme, and/or settings in the name so it’s easy to locate and analyze. For example, Display – San Francisco or Search – Brand – English.

2. Do keyword research

This is, perhaps, the most important step to take when creating a Google Ads campaign. Doing keyword research tells you, first and foremost, if people are searching for your product or service online. What’s the point of all this trouble if there’s not a lot of search queries being made that are relevant to your business.

To do keyword research, you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool. This is like a database of all keywords and keyword phrases through which Google will tell you all other phrases that are similar and relevant to your keywords, how often people search these words and phrases, how much competition there is, and how much it will cost you to advertise per keyword.

3. Filter keywords

Once you’ve made a list of all the keywords that you are interested in using, make sure to ask yourself these three questions to evaluate their value:

• Is there a search volume for the keyword phrase in Google? If there isn’t any search volume, then that tells you that no one is typing that phrase in the search box. Don’t waste your time advertising on those keywords.
• Would the individuals searching this keyword be likely to buy my product or service? Because Google Ads cost money, it’s not going to be enough just getting people to visit your site. You want them to take action. You need to find out the “purchase intent” of the keyword.
• Does the keyword cost fit into my budget? Does the cost of advertising on this keyword result in profit for me? Calculate your max CPC (cost per click) based on your profit per customer, profit margin, and website conversion rate. If the estimate CPC provided by Google is lower, then you know that your chance of profiting from that keyword is higher.

4. Segment keywords

Once you’ve filtered your list and come up with a final list, you need to group them. Grouping keywords make your PPC campaigns more successful and cost-effective. It enables you to create ad groups that are more quality-score friendly and produce more relevant ads that drive more conversions.

Start by choosing a top-level keyword group which should be broad, later to be broken down into several smaller specific subgroups. The keywords should generally be a broad representation of your business offerings such as cookies if you’re a bakery or plumbing if you offer this service.

Once you have the top-level keyword, you can further segment it to smaller groups. In our example, you can create separate subgroups such as gingerbread, shortbread, and chocolate chip. You can break that down even further. You can create third-level groups such as gluten-free and sugar-free. Optimizing your keywords in such a way ensures that your ad groups and keywords are very specific and target a range of search queries.

Pro-tip: make sure that the number of keywords per group is no more than 10 to 20. Doing so makes it easier to create landing pages that are relevant to your buyer and fit well with your ads.

5. Add in each ad group exact, phrase, broad, broad mod. keywords (or separate ad groups by match types)

Once you have your keyword groups, add them to your ad groups according to match types. You need to strike a balance between several match types to get the most success. But you also need to make sure that your keyword groups match the specific landing page that you plan to direct the buyers to. Don’t try to target a broad audience in a single ad group. Make sure to create specific, focused ad groups.

6. Add negative keywords

We’ve already delved a little into negative keywords and their purpose. Because you want to avoid completely irrelevant searches triggering your ad, you need to exclude certain keywords. These are called negative keywords.

For example, if you are advertising your services as a software engineer, you don’t want to get searches for civil and electrical engineers triggering your ad and ruining ypur budget.

7. Write down your ad copy relevant to your keywords in your ad group (3 headlines up to 30 characters, 2 descriptions up to 90 characters)

After creating your campaign, ad groups, and keywords, you’re next step is to create your text ad. The components of an ad are as follows:

Headline – what the potential buyers will see first so it should capture their attention. At the same time, make sure to display your target keywords in the headline.

Description lines – this is where you need to better describe your offering in order to get the searcher to click on your ad and take the action you want them to get.

Display URL – this is the URL that the searcher will see.

Destination URL – the actual URL the searcher will be directed to.

Knowing the basic elements of a text ad is one thing. Creating a high-performing text ad is another. Here are some of the best practices you should keep in mind:

• Mirror the visitor’s end goal. Make sure that your ad shows what the searchers want to accomplish.
• Add a little FOMO in your ad. You can opt to add a countdown timer in your ad to motivate searchers in taking action now.
• Be super specific. For example, if you have a plumbing service, you can include the exact number of clients you’ve serviced since you’ve been in business.
• Make your ad personal. Don’t use pronouns such as “we” and “us.” Your copy should resonate with the reader so make sure to use “you” instead.
• Be hyper-local with your ad. There’s something attractive about a product/service that’s just around the corner. Even if you offer services in several areas, avoid providing 800 numbers. Showing a local one can easily double your conversion rates.
• Test, test, test. You won’t know what works for your business best if you don’t test your ads out.

8. Add at least 4 types of extensions

Ad extensions can help your ad stand out from the competition and improve your click-through rate. But what exactly are they? These are additional bits of information that are relevant to your business which can be included in your text ad. These can be the location of your business, phone number, and ratings or reviews.

When selecting ad extensions, make sure that they will be able to help you meet your business goals. For example, if you want to provide buyers with direct links to specific products in your site, you can use Google Adwords Sitelinks. This type of ad extension includes additional links to specific pages in your site in your ad. Call extensions is a type of ad extension that displays your business phone number in the ad AND allows them to call you directly from the search results.

Pro Tip: if you’re not sure which combination of ad extensions work best for your business, just set up all the extensions that are relevant. Google will choose the best performing combination for you. Then, just check which combination was chosen by Google to get some insight into customer behavior.