Posted In: Hidden by
Dan Howard,
July 2, 2015
AdWords is an ever-growing landscape, enhanced campaigns, close match variants, High/low search volume keywords, audience layering are now all key components which need to be considered when structuring an account.
Ensuring you get the right structure in place is fundamental to the success and management of any AdWords account. The beauty of working at an agency like WAB is you get to manage a range of different AdWords accounts, that all require a different approach and strategy. Over the years we’ve inherited a lot of poorly structured accounts that fail to meet AdWords best practise (but we’ll move on to that later) and a lot of accounts that fail to meet We Are Boutique’s best practise. A combination of the 2 is where we feel every PPC account needs to be in order to deliver the strongest results possible.
Why Is AdWords Account Structure So Important?
Quality Score
When determining Quality Score Google considers a range of different factors including;
From experience, these important factors can be managed more effectively by having an account structure that helps inject that ‘relevance’ factor Google craves so badly across your keywords, ad copy and landing pages.
Ad Relevance & Keyword Relevance
To achieve a strong ad/keyword relevance, you need to make sure your ad copy is as relevant as it can be to the keyword it’s appearing for. So when creating ad copy, always refer back to the keyword and ask yourself questions like:
To help answer some of the above questions it’s important you have tailored ad copy for each of your keywords. By increasing the amount of ad groups in your account you give yourself the opportunity to split out keywords at a more granular level and begin to tailor ad copy to specific keywords.
Expected CTR
When factoring in all of the above, you’ll find that the ‘Expected CTR’ score will increase due to increased keyword and ad copy relevance. However, another important factor to consider is your call to actions (CTA’s) that you use across your ad copy. So what are your main USP’s for grabbing people’s attention and getting them to click on your ad? A few examples of these could be;
Showing these off throughout your ad copy (including your ad extensions) will help achieve a stronger ‘Expected CTR’.
Landing Page Experience
How is the traffic responding once they land on site? Google will also look at things like conversion rates, bounce rates, time on site, page structure etc when determining quality score, so it’s important that you send your traffic through to relevant, engaging landing pages.
In an ideal world you should have a keyword that’s relevant to your ad copy and ad copy that’s relevant to your landing page, so all 3 marry up and provide a ‘better user experience’.
There are any shortcuts to achieving a 10/10 quality score, and the key to achieving this is by having a granular approach to how you organise and structure your AdWords account. The good news is that Google rewards you for your hard work, by significantly reducing the amount of money you pay for a click (see image below).
Not a bad little business model from Google!
Budget Management
Because Google only allows you to control your daily budgets at campaign level, it’s important that you again, take this ‘granular’ approach’ when structuring your AdWords account. The trap most advertisers tend to fall in to is they have both high performing and low performing keywords running out of the same campaign, that are both capable of spending beyond the campaigns daily budget.
The downside to this of course is that you lose valuable impression share for those high performing keywords in that campaign, that could have resulted in more conversions! The simple solution to this is to introduce another campaign into your AdWords account to house those high performing campaigns, and give it it’s own budget.
Navigation
Everyone likes a well organised AdWords account that allows you to navigate from campaign to ad group to keyword with ease – don’t they? When it comes to managing daily budgets and carrying out account wide optimisations, it’s important to always maintain that top line, birds eye view of everything at all times.
The last thing you want is to jump into an AdWords account, discover there’s a problem, but struggle to navigate to the source of the problem because the campaigns and ad groups don’t follow any logical structure.
Trust me! For your own sanity, make sure your AdWords account is organised, well-structured and easy to navigate at all times.
Quick tip – Use AdWords labels to help you improve your accounts navigation.
The 6 Critical Components of AdWords Account Structure
Campaigns
The campaigns in your account should ideally be structured around the ‘broad themes’ a website follows. Usually following the main navigational links (usually at the top of a website) that will take a user to sub-categories of a website.
Ad Groups
The ad groups you have should ideally be structured following the ‘sub-categories’ sections of the website. E.g. if you sold t-shirts, then your ad groups might be the colours, size and material of those t-shirts.
Keywords
Are where it all starts in an AdWords account, ultimately controlling the way your ad is triggered. The keywords you choose should absolutely reflect the product/service a website offers, but also the budget an advertiser has available to them. If you only have a limited budget to spend on clicks, then make sure you choose your keywords wisely. It’s important you choose keywords that have the best chance of converting, but that also have enough search volume to spend your available budget.
Quick tip – The more exact match keywords your account has the better. You can control how your budget is spent more efficiently and make quicker decisions on whether a keyword is performing or not.
Ad Copy
Is what will appear on Google when your ad is triggered via a keyword in your account. The key to good ad copy is adopting a ‘testing & learning’ approach. The truth is you won’t know what the best piece of ad copy is for you until you start testing and learning. We’d recommend having a minimum of 3 pieces of ad copy per ad group. 2 strong pieces that have proven their worth in the past and 1 piece that you use to always try and improve those 2 other pieces.
Quick tip – make sure you take full advantage of all the ad extensions you have available to you. Ad extensions will help towards improving your quality score.
Negative Keywords
If you have shopping campaigns or broad and phrase match keywords in your account it’s important you stay on top of your negative keywords. If you’re not careful Google will show your ads for irrelevant search terms, and you may end up paying for clicks that given the choice, you wouldn’t have paid for.
Landing Pages
The landing pages are the destinations you’re sending your ads to, so should ideally be a close reflection of the keywords and ad copy they’re representing. Because this is the first page of the website a potential customer is going to see, it’s important that you choose a landing page that’s going to give the best first impression – so choose your landing pages wisely!
Quick tip – If you’re struggling to choose between 2 landing pages, you can always ‘split test’ your ad copy and have 1 piece going to one landing page and the other piece going to the other.
Conclusion
All AdWords accounts come in different sizes, have different budgets and sell different products and services. It’s for this reason that every AdWords account will require a slightly different way of structuring campaigns, ad groups and keywords. An AdWords account should always be built with the website it’s sending traffic too in mind, as ultimately, this where your traffic is going to make that final decision on whether to take further action. Whether that’s keywords you choose to bid on, ad copy you choose to use or landing pages you choose to send traffic too.
At the end of the day Google just want us advertisers to provide their users with the ‘best user-experience possible’ and if we do that, then they’ll give us better quality scores and cheaper clicks for it. And a well-structured AdWords account is one of the most important ways to help you achieving these stronger quality scores and cheaper CPC’s.
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