Google Ads Campaign Structure Best Practices

Setting up a new search campaign in Google Ads should be easy enough, right? Sometimes, it is. Other times, however, it can be a bit more nuanced. Depending on the goal of the campaign, the nature of the business, and many other factors, your campaign structure can vary from client to client. Thankfully, there are some surefire strategies you can employ each time that should set you up for success! In this post, we’ll discuss the basics behind structuring your campaign in Google Ads, which includes ad group structure, keyword selection, writing ad copy, and utilizing ad extensions.

What are SKAGs?

So you’ve determined that you’d like to set up a search campaign — great! Now, the question becomes, how do I structure my ad groups? Ad groups are used to create structure within each campaign, ensuring that relevant keywords are grouped thematically and provide the best keyword to ad text association. The best way to ensure this relevancy is to implement single keyword ad groups (SKAGs, for short). This way, you can be certain that when a user types in a certain keyword, the ad they’re shown will be most customized to their query, which is most likely to lead to a click and ultimately a conversion!

SKAGs can sometimes be a bit tedious to set up, especially for bigger accounts. If you’re unable to structure your ad groups this way, just make sure you don’t crowd your ad groups too much (no more than 20 keywords per ad group is ideal).

Knowing how to structure your ad groups within your Google Ads campaign structure is great, but it won’t mean much unless you’re targeting the correct keywords. When searching for relevant keywords, keep in mind that you’re looking to target the intent of the searcher. Essentially, you want to target people who are looking to take action based on their searches. Also, it can be tempting to simply come up with keywords based on the nature of your business — and that’s a great place to start! But don’t forget to utilize keyword planner tools to ensure your keywords have enough search volume to target.

Google Ads Ad Copy

Once you’ve got your set up down, it’s time to tackle the only part of your job that most people will see, and that’s your ad copy! Google rewards advertisers who ensure their ad copy is as relevant as possible to their keywords (which is where SKAGs really benefit an account), so it is crucial that you place the keyword you’re targeting somewhere within the ad copy. The best place to do this is in Headline 1, so that when a user types in a search query, they see their query reflecting back at them in the most visible field of the ad. This will likely lead to the highest click-through-rates.

Your ad copy should flow naturally, and be conversion-friendly where applicable. Also, it is recommended to run at least two expanded text ads (ETAs), so that Google can consistently rotate and test these ads to determine which performs best. You never know which text will perform best with your audience! It is also vital to match any potential ad copy with the verbiage on the landing page you send the user to. This will help with relevancy, and improving quality score.

Ad Extensions

After figuring out the ad copy you’d like to begin with, it’s time to accessorize! And by accessorize, we mean using all relevant ad extensions to help improve your ad’s real estate on the search engine results page (SERP, for short). Enabling ad extensions on your ads has been shown to increase click-through-rates across the board, and can help inform the searcher of additional information about your business that can help them make a more informed purchase decision.

There are many extensions to choose from, and some make more or less sense depending on the nature of your business, but the most universal extensions that I’ve found to be beneficial are sitelink extensions, callout extensions, call extensions, and image extensions. Sitelinks provide the most screen real estate and can direct the user to up to 4 different landing pages on your site, which provides a wealth of additional information for the user to click through. Callouts are additional snippets of information that you can provide to describe your business but are not clickable.

Call extensions provide the user with a way to contact your business fast, which is beneficial for a user with an immediate need. Beyond that, image extensions, which are relatively new, have shown to provide significant lifts in CTR on the accounts we’ve run them on. They allow you to show an image of your service or offering (currently on mobile only), that gives the user visual clues of what to expect from your business. Enabling these four extensions, at the very least, will set your ads up for even more success!

To Sum It All Up

And that’s just about it! To summarize what we talked about to ensure your Google Ads account has the best campaign structure possible, it’s important to:

• Employ SKAGs to ensure the best keyword to ad copy relevancy
• Choose keywords that are most relevant to your business, and have enough search volume to show on the SERP
• Constantly test relevant ad copy that matches closely to the keyword your targeting, as well as the landing page you’re sending the user to
• Enabling all relevant ad extensions to help your ad pop!

Want to learn more or looking for someone to help with your Google Ads account? Feel free to reach out to Socium Media by filling out a free consultation form!