Hi everyone, I'm looking to start advertising with AdWords for the first time and though there's tons of great info in this forum and in Google's forums and primers, I'm unsure as what the best structure for my ecommerce site should be. I know that I need to get this much at least right from the beginning, so I'd love to hear any advice on this. Let's say my site has 3 main product groups that are all geo-targeting the same area, in this example, aquariums, aquarium filters, and water quality testers. Since they will all have the same geographic target, would I start one campaign with these 3 as different ad groups? Or should I start 3 different campaigns? Say I have three different brands of aquariums. Should they each be in separate ad groups under the campaign 'aquariums'? And what about the synonym for the word aquarium, i.e., fish tanks? Would fish tank(s) be in its own ad group alongside aquariums or should it be a separate campaign? Thanks for the help.
Generally think of a campaign as a category. I've done a campaign for an aquarium supplier and I did not do one campaign per category. For one thing, you only have a maximum of 25 campaigns per account. If you only have those three categories (aquariums, filters, testers), and don't believe you'll ever have more, should not be a problem. But keep in mind restrictions and be able to scale. Plan ahead carefully. If only one campaign, your ad groups will have to be named properly. I would use the generic name of the product then the specific. For example, "Filter, Aquaclear". I would separate by brands as people do search on brands.
Thanks for the info. Yeah, I don't anticipate adding extra categories at this time, and it seems like having everything for this site in one campaign might simplify things a bit. Regarding the keyword 'fish tanks', should I put that in a separate ad group that has ads with 'fish tanks' in them instead of 'aquariums'? The other question I have is about broad match keywords. Of course I expect higher CTR and conversion rates with long-tail keywords such as the ones that would be in the 'Filter, Aquaclear' ad group. But if I wanted to try to match for the broad term 'aquariums', would that be best placed in a separate ad group alongside the rest of the ad groups that are brand-specific?
I would put fish tank (and fishtank, although much fewer such searches) keywords in their own group. You could then have an ad saying Fish Tank instead of Aquarium and it can help increase click rates. I advise to use broads very sparingly, only for research purposes. When I do use broad matches, it's for longer tails, more than two words. I would never use a one-word keywords such as "aquarium" in any match type. In fact, I don't use the old broad match anymore but the new modified broad match which is the words preceded by a plus sign.
Thanks again, great advice. I guess I need to get my terminology straight. By broad match keywords, I was referring to a keyword that's more general, i.e., not brand-specific. So I meant to say exact matches using [aquarium] or [aquariums]. But your point is well-taken regarding one-word keywords. I'll experiment a little bit with everything.
I have indeed been an advertsier with adwords almost from the day it began. I think it is based on products.