Process Flow
Animated overview of the full workflow
TL;DR
Google Ads follows a four-level hierarchy: Account > Campaigns > Ad Groups > Keywords/Ads. Your account holds billing and settings. Campaigns control budget, bidding, targeting, and campaign type. Ad groups contain themed clusters of keywords and their matching ads. Good structure means easier management, better Quality Scores, more relevant ads, and lower costs. The biggest mistake beginners make is dumping everything into one campaign with one ad group.
Step-by-Step Guide
Follow these 6 steps to complete this guide
- 1
Why Account Structure Matters
The way you organise your Google Ads account directly impacts performance, cost efficiency, and how easily you can manage and scale your advertising. A well-structured account means higher Quality Scores because your ads are more relevant to the keywords triggering them, lower cost per click because Google rewards relevance with better ad positions at lower prices, easier reporting because you can quickly see performance by theme, product, or service, better budget control because you allocate budget at the campaign level, and simpler optimisation because you can make changes at the right level without affecting unrelated campaigns. A poorly structured account — where all keywords are thrown into one ad group, or where campaigns mix unrelated products — makes it nearly impossible to write relevant ads, set appropriate bids, or diagnose performance issues.
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The Four Levels of Google Ads
### Level 1: Account Your Google Ads account is the top-level container. At this level, you manage billing and payments, user access and permissions, linked accounts (Google Analytics, GTM, Merchant Center), and account-wide settings like auto-applied recommendations and notification preferences. Most advertisers have one account per business entity. Agencies typically use a Manager Account (MCC) to oversee multiple client accounts from a single dashboard. ### Level 2: Campaigns Campaigns are where your strategic decisions live. Each campaign controls the campaign type (Search, Display, Shopping, Video, Performance Max, App, or Demand Gen), daily budget, bidding strategy (Manual CPC, Maximise Conversions, Target CPA, Target ROAS, etc.), location targeting, language targeting, ad schedule, and network settings. Think of each campaign as representing a distinct business objective, product category, or audience strategy. Examples of good campaign separation include separate campaigns for Search vs Display (different intent, different metrics), separate campaigns for brand keywords vs non-brand keywords (different performance expectations), separate campaigns for different geographic regions if budgets need to differ, and separate campaigns for different product categories if they have different margins or CPA targets. ### Level 3: Ad Groups Ad groups sit inside campaigns and contain your keywords and ads. An ad group should represent a single, tightly themed topic so that the ads within it are highly relevant to every keyword in the group. **The golden rule of ad groups:** Every keyword in an ad group should be closely enough related that a single ad could be relevant to all of them. For example, if you run a plumbing company, you would not put "emergency plumber" and "bathroom renovation" in the same ad group because they need different ad copy. "Emergency plumber," "24 hour plumber," and "urgent plumber near me" belong together because they share the same intent and can be addressed by the same ad. ### Level 4: Keywords and Ads **Keywords** are the search terms you bid on. Each keyword has a match type. Broad Match gives the widest reach — Google shows your ad for searches related to your keyword, including synonyms and related concepts. Phrase Match shows your ad for searches that include the meaning of your keyword, denoted with quotation marks. Exact Match is the narrowest targeting — shows your ad for searches that match the meaning of your keyword exactly, denoted with brackets. **Ads** in Google Search are Responsive Search Ads (RSAs). You provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and Google tests different combinations to find the best-performing mix.
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How to Structure a Search Campaign: Practical Example
Let us say you run an e-commerce store selling running shoes: **Campaign: Running Shoes — Brand** contains ad groups for Nike Running Shoes (keywords: nike running shoes, nike air zoom, nike pegasus), Adidas Running Shoes (keywords: adidas running shoes, adidas ultraboost), and New Balance Running (keywords: new balance running shoes, new balance fresh foam). **Campaign: Running Shoes — Non-Brand** contains ad groups for Mens Running Shoes (keywords: mens running shoes, running shoes for men, best mens running shoes), Womens Running Shoes (keywords: womens running shoes, running shoes for women), and Trail Running Shoes (keywords: trail running shoes, off road running shoes). **Campaign: Running Shoes — Remarketing (Display)** contains ad groups for Cart Abandoners (audience: users who added to cart but did not purchase) and Past Purchasers (audience: customers who bought in the last 90 days). This structure allows you to set different budgets for brand vs non-brand, write highly specific ad copy for each ad group, and report on performance at a granular level.
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Campaign Structure for Different Business Types
### Lead Generation Businesses For service-based businesses where the goal is form submissions or phone calls, create a campaign per service type, a campaign for brand terms, optionally a campaign for competitor terms with a separate budget, and a remarketing campaign to re-engage website visitors who did not convert. ### E-Commerce Businesses For online stores selling products, create Shopping campaigns (Standard Shopping or Performance Max for product listings), Search campaigns by product category, a brand campaign to protect your brand name searches, and a Dynamic Search Ads campaign to catch long-tail queries you may have missed. ### Local Businesses For businesses targeting a specific geographic area, create a campaign per location or service area with different budgets and bids for high-value vs lower-value areas, a campaign for "near me" and local intent keywords, and Google Local Services Ads if eligible.
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Common Structural Mistakes
**One campaign, one ad group, all keywords** is the most common mistake. It makes your ads generic and your reporting useless. Break things out by theme. **Too many ad groups with one keyword each (SKAGs)** were popular years ago but are no longer recommended. Google's machine learning works better with more data per ad group. Aim for 5-20 closely related keywords per ad group. **Mixing Search and Display in one campaign** should always be avoided. Search and Display have fundamentally different user intent. Always create separate campaigns for each. **No brand campaign** means competitors can bid on your brand name, and you risk losing traffic to competitors when people search for you by name. **Ignoring negative keywords** means your ad groups will overlap, competing against each other and wasting budget on irrelevant searches.
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How Many Campaigns Should You Have?
There is no universal answer. Start with as few campaigns as you need to maintain control over budget and targeting, then expand as your account grows. A small business might start with 2-3 campaigns. A large e-commerce site might have 20+.
Frequently asked
Questions & answers
Can I move keywords between ad groups?
You cannot move them directly. You need to add the keyword to the new ad group and pause or remove it from the old one. Historical data stays with the original.
How many keywords should I have per ad group?
Aim for 5-20 tightly themed keywords. Fewer than 5 limits data, more than 20 usually means the theme is too broad and should be split.
Should I use one campaign per product or one per objective?
Think in terms of budget and bidding. If two products need different daily budgets or different bidding strategies, put them in separate campaigns. If they can share a budget and strategy, they can share a campaign.
What about Performance Max — does structure still matter?
Performance Max uses asset groups instead of ad groups and automates much of the targeting. However, you still structure asset groups by theme, and campaign-level budget and goal decisions still apply.
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