How To Best Structure a Google AdWords Account

If you’re familiar with the back-end of a Google AdWords account, you’re probably aware that things can get messy very quickly if they aren’t structured properly from the start. As the account structure is the backbone of all your AdWord campaigns, you want to make sure that you set it up the absolute best way possible to avoid inefficiency and confusion for the long run.

We’re here to help and provide you with the absolute best way to structure your Google AdWords account to ensure that anyone looking at the account after you can properly understand it efficiently from the start. Here’s the secret: structure your account specific to how you view your business, which is usually the way your company website is structured.

For example, if your business sells animal food, and your website is setup in terms of the various animal foods, i.e. cat food, dog food, fish food, etc., then these should be your campaign titles. Under each campaign title should be the various Ad Groups, where you can go into more detail, for example “cheap,” “discount,” “organic,” etc. This often depends on how much longtail search there is in your industry. However, the goal is to set it up logically, so that if someone were to come in and take over your account, they’d be able to logically find everything in an organized manner.

We can promise that this is the absolute best way to structure your AdWords account and recommend avoiding other common ways. Some swear by “Match Type” and “Best Keywords,” but these methods are only short-term fixes and get messy in the long-run. Allow us to explain…

Structuring By Match Type

Some people like organizing a campaign by exact match, phrase match, broad match, etc. This means that you’d have the same keywords for every different match type. For example, if your keywords are “organic dog food,” the same keywords would be present for all various match types, meaning you’d have the same keyword in four different campaigns.

Let’s say you have the brilliant idea of testing the ad for “organic dog food.” If you want to do it the right way, you’d have to test that ad in four different ad groups. Here is where you’ll run into issues as having the same ad in four different ad groups doesn’t make sense as you have to manage the same combination of keywords in the four different places; this makes testing a big challenge.

If all of this was in the ad group “organic,” you could change the ad to see how “organic dog food” was performing, or, if you want to run a promotion, it’s all in one place – not by match type. If someone were to ask to check how “organic dog food” is doing, you’d have to go to the keyword tab, filter by the keywords “organic and dog food” and then condense it all, which ends up being a mess. If you sort it from the beginning simply by naming the campaign: “dog food,” followed by ad group: “organic,” you can easily manage and observe the trends in the overall campaign.

Structuring By Best Keywords

Another common structuring is by “Best Keywords,” where people put what the best keywords are into an ad group or campaign. If you’ve ever managed different accounts before, you’ll quickly see that setting it up this way makes the least sense as stuff that used to work and doesn’t work anymore can be seen and it becomes a total mess.

For example, if “summer dog treats” is the keywords, when it becomes winter, this keyword would end up becoming paused or deleted, which would require you to then bring it back again next summer. If you use the proper structuring, you’d put “dog food” as the campaign name and add “summer” as ad group. This way, you can easily turn “summer” on or off whenever is best. It’s logical. If it’s time-sensitive by year, you can create an ad group for each year and swap it out year over year. Once again, it’s in one place and organized, which allows you and your team to manage the account more efficiently.

To summarize, some swear to structure “by match type.” But as you can see, it becomes complicated quickly when campaigns can be much better organized by campaign and ad group for the long-term. For the short-term it could work, but for the long-term, it doesn’t allow you to maximize and optimize the efficiency over time. Same thing goes for sorting “by best keywords” – just keep it organized from the get-go.

The structure is the backbone and the base of the infrastructure of your account; do it correctly and precisely, and you will be able to manage your account much more effectively and productively. It will also ease the process of people who come to help or replace you understand what’s going on and be productive from the beginning without having to decipher all the mess you make by making illogical campaigns. Good luck and get organized!