Google AdWords Learning Center - Organising Your Account

Google AdWords gives you a basic structure to work within. From here, it's essentially up to you to organise your own campaigns, ad groups, keywords and placements in a way that makes most sense to you. Organisation is a key component to starting off strong and helping you determine what works and what does not.

Note: This lesson is geared toward campaigns that are using only keyword targeting. However, many of the concepts can also be applied to campaigns that use placement targeting in conjunction with keyword targeting. To learn more, please read the lesson about how keywords and placements work together.

Every account starts with a single campaign. Each campaign — whether you have one or multiple — should reflect a single, overarching goal. When building a campaign, ask yourself "What do I want to achieve with this campaign?" Your answer might be to target a certain audience, sell more products, increase signups or bring in more leads.

Some effective ways to organise your campaigns are by:

Theme or product line (coffee products, tea products, gift baskets)
Your website's structure, such as by categories (purchase, learn, signup)
Different brands (X, Y and Z)
Geography (London, Manchester and United kingdom)
Language (English, Spanish, German)
Distribution preference (search engines only, content sites only or both search and content)
Budgets (different budgets per product line)

Map your structure on paper first to provide a template for the real thing.

Just like your campaigns, your ad groups should be organised by common theme, product or goal. Often, picking keywords and placements can lay the groundwork for your ad group strategy. Think hard about your keywords and placements. When choosing keywords, think of what words someone would search for on Google when seeking your product. Try writing down every keyword that comes to mind. You can refine them later. (This is discussed more in the Selecting Keywords topic below.)

Next, group similar keywords together - such as by a common theme. Each grouping reflects an ad group. For example, if your campaign goal is to sell more coffee beans, logical ad groups might include:

Gourmet coffee beans	Organic coffee beans	French roast beans
Keywords: Speciality coffee Gourmet coffee Gourmet coffee beans	Keywords: Organic coffee beans Decaf organic coffee Natural coffee	Keywords: Decaf French roast coffee French roast coffee beans French coffee beans

Similarly, when choosing placements, consider where your typical customer might be browsing and target those types of sites for ad placement. Although this lesson is geared towards campaigns that are using keyword targeting only, many of the concepts can also be applied to campaigns that use placement targeting in conjunction with keyword targeting. To learn more, please read the lesson about how keywords and placements work together.

If you find that the keywords or placements in one ad group become unwieldy, split the ad group into two to make them easier to manage.

Finally, give your campaigns and ad groups descriptive names. This helps you manage your account at a high level without memorising the content of each of your ad groups.

Your AdWords account needs constant checkups. You can continue to reorganise your account as you learn more. The key is to check your progress and continue to refine your account. As you add more products, keywords or placements, you may need to reorganise your account. This is explained in more detail throughout this lesson and in the Optimising Your Account lesson.

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