Setting up a Google AdWords campaign

You want your business to be positioned as well as possible in Google's search engine. With good positioning and the right settings, you maintain the quality of the account and traffic. The settings when creating ads play a role in this, but so does the content of the ads. With a successful Google Ads campaign, you make sure your business name appears in the search results in a high-quality way. If you don't set it up according to Google's requirements, you'll be positioned lower and pay more per click. Want to set up a Google Ads campaign yourself? This blog explains it step by step.

STEP-BY-STEP PLAN FOR CREATING A GOOGLE ADWORDS AD

1. CREATE A GOOGLE ADS ACCOUNT

First, create a Google Ads account. To do this, go to ads.google.com and click ‘Start now’. You'll be taken to a Google login page where you can log in with a Google account or create a new one.

Once you're logged in, you'll come to a screen asking for your main advertising goal. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see a (very, very small) link that says “Switch to Expert Mode”. Click on it and we'll get started setting up your first campaign.

2. Setting up ads using Google Support

Set up your ads using Google Support.

► Go to https://support.google.com/

• Select the AdWords heading
• In the settings column, select create your ads and campaigns
• Then choose a topic that applies to that part of the campaign.

3. Ad settings

► Go to: AdWords > My Client Centre > Click the Campaigns tab > Then + Campaign > Select Search Network only and select all features to start creating a campaign.

Give the Google AdWords campaign a relevant name. This can relate to your ads or a particular audience. Our advice is to use Exact keywords and Broad Match Modifier keywords, because these let you reach your audience more specifically.

Always create an exact and a BMM variant of the campaign, excluding the exact keywords in the broad match modifier campaign. The reason for this is to steer the traffic in the right direction and to avoid bidding against yourself. Example campaign name: 01.00 Dames-Collectie-BMM or e.g. 01.00-Dames-Collectie-Exact) This will ultimately help when analysing and optimising campaigns through reports.

► Scroll down to see the settings options

• Networks: Select Google Search & search partners
• Devices: Our advice is to select all devices at the start; adjustments can be made later as part of any optimisations.
• Locations:
• Select the country you want to target with your ads; if you want to advertise even more specifically, you can advertise on cities or postcodes via advanced search

► Scroll further until you reach languages

• Select Dutch & English
• Then click save and continue

► Create ad groups > Give the ad groups that fall under and relate to the new Google Ads campaigns a name > for example, the campaign 01.00-Dames-Collect > Ad group: Broeken Dameskleding or Jassen dameskleding

4. Creating Google AdWords ads

► This is where the Final URL, Headline, Path 1 & 2, Headline 1 & Headline 2 and the description are filled in. Examples are shown next to these items.

• Final URL > Enter a relevant landing page
• Headline 1: Give the headline as much relevance to your keywords and ad content as possible
• Path 1 & 2: This is always the base URL linked to the ad group's topic > for example (Voorbeeld.nl/Dames-Jeans)
• Headline 1 & 2: A relevant text based on your company's USPs or a sharp ‘from’ price. (both limited to 30 characters)
• Description: This is where most of the text can be entered, up to a maximum of 80 characters
• Create an example ad
• Once you've filled in all fields without any error messages, click ‘Review campaign’

5. The option to create multiple ads

• Creating several relevant ads per ad group is recommended (min. 2), so you can test ads against each other, but make sure the ad rotation setting is set to Rotate indefinitely.
• Click ‘Review campaign’, then ‘Save and finish’

6. OVERVIEW OF GOOGLE ADS CAMPAIGNS WITH AD GROUPS

• Click keywords and then ‘+keywords’
• The ad is best positioned when the keywords match the ad text (Headline)
• You can add words you want to be found for
• In the Modified Broad campaigns, put a ‘+’ before each keyword, e.g. +nette schoenen
• In the Exact campaigns, start and end all keywords with ‘[ ]’, e.g. [nette schoenen]
• Always set higher bids for your exact campaigns, because they're ultimately cheaper and you want to use the BMM campaigns to bring in relevant keyword ideas.

7. Ad extensions

Our advice here is to use sitelinks, callout extensions and structured snippet extensions at campaign level. All the different extensions are described in detail via this link.