Knowing the Ad Word basics isn’t necessarily enough to get the most out of your PPC campaign. Unfortunately, each campaign differs greatly, so there’s no easy, go-to way to do it. Your account will be structured to your specific company, taking into consideration your personal advertising goals, budget, website, clients, etc.- all of which may, and most likely will, change over time. Organizing your PPC account will only increase performance – here are six steps to help.
The Basics
If you’re a small business that’s just starting, creating one to three campaigns will work. Within each of your campaigns, have multiple ad groups that contain organized keywords and ads. This sets you up for solid Quality Scores.
Once you’ve conquered this, you’re ready to move on to the steps that will help make your campaigns a success.
Structuring Your Website
What’s your website’s structure? Do you have a natural hierarchy for your products/services? If so, the easiest way to structure your PPC campaign is to mimic your website. Consider your campaign a category link, while your ad groups are sub-categories. In doing this, your ad copy refers to your products/services and links to that specific product/service category or page. If you need help restructuring or optimizing your website, we know a great SEO agency that can help.
Campaign Theme
Organizing your campaign by theme or topic is the most instinctive route to go, but keep in mind that this may not match your website’s structure. For example, if your website is built out with a large hierarchy, copying this in your campaign could backfire. It could be difficult to manage, but the search volume could also be low in certain areas- you want to make sure you’re thinking about the most viable parts of your business and put your focus there, designing your account around those areas.
Location
You’ve always heard that location is everything. That holds true in your campaign, too. Geo targeting is important! Organizing your campaign dependent upon the areas you want to target is a critical move. For example, say you have five stores in Colorado and you create a campaign for each, you should use ad copy that specifically relates to each area, inclusive of the contact information in order to direct customers to their closest store.
Performance
Organizing your campaign based on the best-performing areas just makes sense. You need to assign your spending in a manner that benefits your business. If specific ad words are converting higher than others, but your budget is limited, you could be losing conversions. If this is happening, consider adding a new campaign for high-converting ad groups with a larger budget, this will allow them to perform at their greatest potential.
Match Types
This one is debatable among the PPC world. Here’s the deal: Google is excellent at spending your money. As a general rule, we never use the “Broad” match type for any keyword as this give Google too much flexibility in showing your ad for irrelevant searches and will undoubtedly waste a good portion of your budget. Start off with “Broad Match Modified” keywords using the “+” symbol in front of each of the words in your keyword. For example, if you are using “BBQ Supplies Near Me” as a keyword, the “Broad Match Modified” version of this keyword will look like “+BBQ +Supplies +Near +Me”.
‘Tis the Season
When looking to gain ROI during a holiday or certain time of year, it’s a good idea to create a new, time-sensitive campaign. This allows for a its own budget and can be reactivated in the following years/seasons if performance goes well. Make sure the ad copy and keywords speak to the holiday or occasion.
Organization and structure of your account is so important to your PPC success. Don’t overlook testing- figure out what works best before you kill your budget. Restructure based upon results, your campaign isn’t set in stone. It’s supposed to help you out, not stress you out.
If you have any questions or comments regarding your PPC account, feel free to contact us at Denver PPC.
