Account structure

The way you structure your Google Ads account allows you to control how you want your ads to be triggered and when and where you want them to appear. Not having a well-structured account is like attempting to drive a car that’s not properly built – accidents are bound to happen. Keep in mind that having a well-structured account will:

• Ensure that the searches triggering your ads are relevant for your audience.
• Result in better quality scores, which in turn results in better results and lower prices. Quality score is essentially the scale of how much Google likes you (and trust me, you want Google to love you!).
• Keep you organized and able to optimize. If your account is a mess, then you’re likely to get lost in the mess, your results will plummet (or never arrive) and optimizing to get better results will be out of the question. So keep in mind organization (and your own sanity) when structuring your account.

The 7 Critical Components of Google Ads Account Structure

It’s important to have a full understanding of each component of account structure before even dreaming of getting started, so let’s quickly review the basics.

1. Campaigns: How to structure Google Ads campaigns, in a nutshell: Unless your account is very large, you’ll typically only have a few campaigns that surround broader themes. Each campaign will contain ad groups, which contain keywords that tie to your text ads and direct to your landing page. Typically I recommend deciding on campaign topics based on how you want to divide up your marketing budget since you set up your budget at the campaign level.

2. Ad Groups: Understanding the relationship between these layers of your account will help you organize your ads, keywords, and ad groups into effective campaigns that target the right audience. Under each campaign, you will create relevant ad groups, which will be much more specific. There’s no recommended number of ad groups to have under a campaign, but typically it’s more manageable to not go overboard since this will stretch your campaign budget across so many ad groups, keywords, ads, and landing pages, that results could suffer. Ad groups contain keywords (no more than 10-20 is recommended), these keywords will trigger your text ads (2-3 per ad group), and then direct to a relevant landing page.

3. Keywords: Keywords will fall under each ad group, and are very important to controlling the way your ad is triggered. When someone types in the search box in Google, that search is called a “search query,” which is then matched with a keyword, which then triggers an ad. Each keyword will have a Max CPC, match type, and quality score tied to it. It’s critical to conduct thorough keyword research, gain a concrete understanding of match types, and spend time refining and optimizing your keyword strategy over time.
   
4. Negative Keywords: These are vastly overlooked by advertisers, but they’re critical to set up and build upon to avoid spending money on irrelevant searches. Especially if you’re using more broad match and/or modified broad match keywords, you’re highly likely to pull in some completely irrelevant search queries that match with your keywords and ads. Keep building your negative keywords list and checking out your search query report (or QueryStream for WordStream users) to identify new negatives.

5. Ad Text: This is the actual text that will appear when your ad is triggered. Each ad group should have 2-3 ads per ads per group directing to the same landing page. It’s important to follow AdWords guidelines in order to get your ads approved, A/B test your ads over time, and really highlight the benefits of your offering to one-up your competition in the search results.

6. Landing Pages: The destination where each ad will direct the searcher to (likely a page on your site with an offering or call-to-action). I recommend being very strategic with your landing pages, making sure that each ad directs to an extremely relevant page, which reflects not only the keywords you’re bidding on within that ad group, but also the ad text displaying in the SERPs. Landing page relevancy and optimization are critical to see success with PPC. 

7. Google Ads Billing & payments pages
   The Billing & payments pages under the tools icon are your one-stop-shop for paying for your advertising costs and managing your billing. These pages offer simple navigation, filtering options, and easy-to-see summaries of all your important billing and payment information.

Invalid traffic refers to clicks and impressions on ads that aren’t a result of genuine user interest. For example, if someone double clicks your ad. You won’t be charged for invalid clicks or impressions since they have little or no value. If we find invalid clicks that have somehow escaped our automated detection in the past two months, we’ll give you credit for these clicks. To view these credits for invalid clicks, click the Billing tab. Any invalid click credits you’ve received will be labeled “Invalid activity” on the transaction history page and will be credited to you. 

You can find credits for invalid clicks in the tab “billing”.