I am about to embark on my first Adwords project and that too for a client, so I want to get this right. My question is if I should structure my campaigns according to themes or by keywords? Here's a scenario: Themes would be similar to: -Cost ("painting service cost", "estimates", "pricing") -Service providers ("painters", "paining service", "paint contractors") -Ideas ("painting ideas", "paint photos") -The themes can further be expanded to include painting related services such as roof coating, metal finishing, wood restoration and so on. If I structure my campaigns according to concepts then I would need to spread out similar keywords in different campaigns. Notice that "Painting" exists in different concepts above. On the other hand if I create ad groups based on just keywords, then themes may not be possible: Ad group 1 (keyword "Painting") Painting Services Painting Contractor Painting Ideas Ad Group 2 (keyword "Commercial Painting") Commercial Paining Services Commercial Painting Commercial Painting ideas Ad Group 3 (keyword "Paint") Paint ideas Paint service Paint Contractor So, how should I structure my campaigns?
As GuyFromChicago mentioned, that's a good place to start. Some may even find it helpful to use little pieces of paper with your keywords written on them and shuffle them around physically to find the best structure. This intial step can be quite difficult for some campaigns so it requires thought. I usually divide campaigns by country (if we are targetting more than one country). If not country, I then sort out keywords by geographical location. Which states or territories are you targeting? If I am restricted to one state and one country, I usually then break down keywords by product line or target market. One of my clients for example is targeting companies separately to individuals and so I have broken their campaign down in to retail v corporate. Hope that helps.
It's worth remembering that every keyword within an Adgroup displays the same advert. This important since 1) The search query is written in bold if it appears in the advert 2) Google rewards you for having a relevant advert. Having the keyword in the advert (ideally the title) is an important part of this. I certainly wouldn't put Paint Ideas and Paint Contractor in the same group. People searching for these terms are looking for different things, and will respond to very different adverts. If I was looking to group keywords together, then Paint Contractor Paint Contractors Painting Contractor Painting Contractors UK Paint Contractor (and derivatives) would make up one Adgroup. I'd probably have Exact and Phrase match, and run search query reports to identify new keywords (and negative keywords).
Grouping by themes in search network would lead to you getting a lower quality score. You want to group by keywords so that everything is tightly related. While grouping by theme may help you manage and keep track easier it will hurt your quality score and thats not worth it.
I agree, with search you can even go so far as putting one keyword per adgroup. There's scripts out there that can make short work of this and using some well thought out dynamic keyword insertion, you can make sure things are relevant too.
Would grouping by themes while keeping the keywords tight in each ad group lower the quality score? Did you mean that it woudl lower the quality score because the keywords may not be similar in the ad groups of the themes?