Setting up a Google Ads account with all its various campaigns can be a very daunting task. A lot of work needs to be put into an account to ensure that its campaigns and ad groups are structured well.

There are many questions that arise when trying to establish the foundation of an account:

How many campaigns should I have?
How many ad groups should I have per campaign?
How should I segment those campaigns and ad groups?

There are many approaches that you can take to figure out how you should structure your Google Ads account. One approach to take is based on letting the results of your keyword research tell you how you should structure your campaigns and account.

The Keyword Research Adventure

Keyword volumes vary from industry to industry. Some industries have products or services that bring in a ton of keyword volume, while others have keywords that bring in very little.

When going through the keyword research process, your job is to deduce what the results of your research tell you. Keyword volumes can be a great guide for you because they can tell you how your campaign(s) should be organized. If you’re able to correctly interpret the results of your keyword research, then you’ll be able to reach logical conclusions on how to structure your campaigns.

There are two general rules that you can follow to reach these conclusions.

More Traffic = More Campaign and Ad Group Segmentation

If you are advertising in a broad industry with broad categories, then you’ll have a lot of keywords available to you that have high amounts of search volume. This will allow for a lot of hyper segmentation.

You can segment your account into multiple campaigns that each address the advertising goals for a single product or service. You can also segment your campaigns into multiple ad groups so you can monitor how each one performs compared to the others.

Proper ad group segmentation will result in a well-organized campaign that is easier to analyze.

Less Traffic = Less Ad Group Segmentation

A niche industry with narrow amounts of keywords to target will limit your ability to segment your campaigns into multiple ad groups. When setting up a Google Ads campaign, it is ideal for you to have multiple ad groups in that campaign. But if the keywords available in your industry are low volume, then the best course of action would be to combine all your keywords and put them into one ad group.

Our agency set up a campaign to advertise commercial pest control services for a client. We wanted to differentiate the commercial pest control service from the more general residential pest control service, so we only targeted keywords that had the word “commercial” in them. That was the best way to bring in relevant traffic from users who were looking specifically for commercial pest control.

The keyword volumes for commercial pest control were around ten searches a month, so we had no choice but to put all the keywords we found into one ad group. We couldn’t segment those keywords into multiple individual ad groups because they would each bring in an inconsequential number of clicks and impressions. The only way to get a good amount of traffic into any ad group was to put them all into one ad group.

If you’re advertising for an industry that has keywords with very little traffic, that could mean one of two things.

The industry you’re advertising for is too niche

There isn’t much you can do in this instance. You will just have to make the best of the limited keyword options you have. You might even have to consider finding other ways to advertise your business that don’t involve Google Ads.

You’re not looking for the right keywords

If this is the case, then make sure that you have a good understanding of how people search for the product or service that you are selling. The way that you think people are searching for your product or service may not be accurate with the way that they actually do it.

In Conclusion

When setting up an account for your business, follow these guidelines along with the segmentation rules based on your keyword data, and you will be well positioned to set up and manage a well-structured Google Ads account.

Account Structure: How Keyword Research Usually Informs Account/Campaign Setup