Search campaigns: the structure that keeps working

An ad account is a filing system. When nobody can find anything, nothing gets maintained. Structure is therefore an organisational question, not a technical one.

The one rule for campaigns

A campaign is the smallest unit for which you want a separate budget and a separate target. Everything else belongs a level down. If you would never set different budgets for bathroom refits and boiler servicing, you do not need two campaigns for them.

In practice that gives a mid-sized firm three to six campaigns:

• Brand, its own pot with a small budget and very high return.
• Core service, the work the business lives on.
• Second service, if it deserves its own budget.
• Competitors, if at all, tightly capped.
• Remarketing, kept apart from new-customer acquisition.

Ad groups bundle intents

Within a campaign, queries belong together when they deserve the same ad and the same landing page. That is the only test. "Bathroom refit", "bathroom renovation cost" and "bathroom remodel" describe one intent and belong together. "Accessible bathroom" describes a different intent with a different audience and a different argument, so it gets its own group.

Why the old one-keyword structure hurts

Some years ago it was considered best practice to give every ad group exactly one keyword. That structure was built for manual bidding. Today learning systems do the steering, and they need volume in one place. Running 400 groups with two clicks a month each gives the system 400 times too little information. The result is unstable performance and an account nobody can survey.

Names that still make sense in two years

Use a fixed pattern: country, channel, objective, theme. From "UK | Search | Enquiry | Bathroom refit" a new colleague understands the point immediately. Names like "test 3 new final" cost hours later.

What belongs in every ad group

1. At least two responsive search ads so the system can compare.
2. Fifteen headlines: three with the main query, three with a differentiator.
3. Four descriptions, one of which carries a concrete number.
4. Every relevant extension: sitelinks, snippets, call, location.
5. A landing page about this exact topic, not the home page.

The maintenance that actually has to happen

A structure survives only if the upkeep fits in the calendar. Four appointments are realistic: twenty minutes weekly on the search terms report, an hour monthly on ad performance, two hours quarterly on budgets and landing pages, and once a year a comparison of the structure against the current service list.

If you cannot staff those four appointments, you do not need a fine structure. Then one well-maintained campaign with a broad ad group is the more honest choice.