Small Business PPC – Account Structure

I have been informed that even though my last two posts on PPC keyword selection and writing PPC ad copy were good, I was making the assumption that small business owners already understood the structure of PPC accounts. Therefore I will repent, go back to the beginning, and explain how basic account structure affects your PPC performance.

Account -> Campaign -> Ad Group

PPC accounts have 3 main organizational levels (courtesy of Google’s AdWords product) each with distinct characteristics. I will start at the top and work down:

  1. Account – All your campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads are in one, single account. Billing, reporting and conversion tracking operate at the account level.
  2. Campaign – Campaigns contain one or more ad groups. Geotargeting (having your ads show only in specified geographies), daily/monthly budgets, ad serving, demographic targeting, dayparting (only showing ads at specified hours of the day) and negative keywords all operate on a campaign level.
  3. Ad Group – Ad groups consist of one or more keywords with one or more ads. Negative keywords, keyword match types, keyword bids and destination URLs all operate at the ad group level. You will spend most of your time and effort.

When constructing your campaigns and ad groups you want to keep ad groups tightly themed, meaning that all the keywords in the ad group should match with the ads you are showing. While Nike basketball shoes are related to Doc Martens because they are both footwear, you would want to show different ads for each. The key is to start with the most relevant keywords for your business and then expand outward as you see success. As a professional PPC manager I have accounts with hundreds of ad groups, but your small business may only need 3-5 at first to deliver impressive results.

Poll: How many ad groups does your PPC account have? Leave your answers in the comments.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under AdWords, PPC, Small Business, internet marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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2 Responses to “Small Business PPC – Account Structure”

  1. Glenn Crocker Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 8:46 am

    Great stuff. It’s so hard for a small biz owner to understand all the complications of online advertising. Once they do figure it out enough to get started, chances are they’ll be beaten down by more experienced advertisers.

    There’s a need for ad management services for folks spending $50-$3,000/month, but that’s usually too low a budget for a real PPC manager to touch it. I wrote http://AdWordsEvolved.com/r.php with those folks in mind. It’s helped a lot of small biz owners who are willing to put in the time to manage their own campaigns, but want to know they’re doing it the right way and not throwing away their time and money!

    Robert, if you’d like a review copy, I’d be happy to shoot one your way. Just drop me an email.

  2. Small Business PPC - Budget Limitations Got You Down? | Righteous Marketing Says:
    June 23rd, 2009 at 8:41 am

    [...] from our last post that budgets are set on the campaign level. Therefore, if you have $1000 to spend this month and 2 [...]

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