Do you want to create a Google Ads account but don't know how? Understand here!
Plunging into the world of PPC advertising can be intimidating, so we've decided to prepare this article: not just to teach you how to create an account, but to ensure you have the assets you need to run successful campaigns.
Once you've established your credentials, content, structures, as well as campaign settings, payment and tracking options are the next thing you should understand.
Are you ready to run successful campaigns?
As mentioned above, there are a few key elements you will need to consider to be successful on the Google Ads platform, just to illustrate:
- Website designed to easily lead users to their final conversion
- PPC strategy and defined goals.
- Set aside a budget and schedule for testing.
Account setup
To sign up to advertise on Google Ads, you'll need to create a Google Account. Then just go to ads.google.com and login.
Once inside, you will be teased with the question of "What is your main advertising objective?"
When setting up a Google Ads account, select “Switch to Expert Mode” at the bottom.
From that point on, you will be asked to create a campaign. Skip this step for now, until you are familiar with the interface.
You will then be asked to confirm your business information. It is important that this information is correct because you cannot change this in the future.
After creating your Google Ads account, explore it
The new UI sends you directly to the main account page. Although you still want to complete all of this, it is not possible to order it in the same format.
Before creating your first campaign, there will be some work needed to avoid having to go back through the setup process.
The first two recommended areas to tackle are keyword selection followed by account structure.
Creating an Initial PPC Keyword List
Keyword research is the foundation of a pay-per-click campaign.
Keywords are the words or phrases your customers would use when searching for your product or service. When a customer enters a keyword you are bidding on then he will be shown an ad.
There are a few key areas that are useful as you begin to build your keyword portfolio:
- Company Website – A website is typically stuffed with words as well as key phrases that describe your business. Reviewing your site layout will also help you identify any important themes and can also help boost the structure of your campaigns.
- Keyword Research Tools – We recommend taking advantage of these tools to help you expand the main list you pulled from the site. Most tools will also give you insight into volume, competition, as well as recommend starting bid. These tools will also help you identify keyword variations as well as synonyms. There are a ton of tools available for conducting research.
- Think like your customer – Take a step back and put yourself in the customer's shoes. What someone who is looking for your product or type of service on a search engine. You will often find people looking for a problem for which you have a solution.
- Don't forget the branding terms – It sounds obvious enough, but there's value in appearing on both paid and organic keywords in your branded keywords.
Keyword research is an ongoing process, but starting with a strong initial keyword list will start you on the path to PPC success.
Campaign Structure Basics and Best Practices
Organizing is critical in developing a structure for your campaigns. Proper Organization Can Account structure and organization will affect your quality score and influence your account performance.
Campaigns should be targeted to top-level ideas so you can drill down into more rigorously themed ad groups and keywords. Consider the following ways to target your campaigns:
- Based on the products and services you offer
- Geographic location
- Performance and bidding
- Brand-based versus generic names
- Seasonality of your service or product
- Based on keyword match types (you can also target this way at an ad group level as well.)
The best guideline to follow when working through a framework is to ensure that your ad groups are relevant to your campaigns.
The goal is to create a framework where campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads are relevant to each other within your framework.
Mapping of ad creation and landing pages
A final consideration before going into campaign creation and focusing on settings is to write ads and map landing pages by ad group.
The best keyword portfolio and campaign structure can go wrong without the proper ad and landing page experience.
Relevant ads and landing pages help you get a click-through rate, cost-per-lead and ROI, however, there's something even bigger at stake: your quality score depends on it.
The Google Ads system issues a keyword-level quality score for each of your keywords (calculated according to their exact matches) and click-through rate is critical in this calculation.
A high quality score ultimately helps you achieve a higher position on the page and lower your overall cost per click, which means your budget can stretch a little further for the same amount of clicks.
Before diving headlong into ad writing, take a step back and think about the audience you want to attract. There are many aspects around a company that should help you write your ad text.
- Branding: Borrow from other areas of marketing and landing pages to keep the message consistent.
- Products/Services: The language in your ad text should reflect what product or service you can provide to the customer and any branding advantages
- Purpose: Outline the action you want your audience to take on the landing page. Example: Buy now, apply today, learn more.
ad extensions
In addition to the ad itself, advertisers can take advantage of ad extensions.
You can find the full list of extensions available on Google's ad support site. Some of them are:
- Sitelink – Link customers directly to areas of your website
- Callout – Text-based links to highlight benefits
- Location – Encourages people to visit a bricks and mortar business
- Call – Allows people to call directly from your ad
- Price – Shows the price of products or services
- Promotion Extensions – Highlight promotions on your website.
Landing page mapping
As you begin writing ads, try sending a customer on a direct path to conversion.
Nowadays, customers have limited patience and will therefore go back to the search engine until they reach the desired result in one click.
At this point, the preparatory work to dive into the interface and thus start setting up your first campaign is complete.
You should have a list of keywords organized into campaigns and ad groups.
Each ad group should have some ad variations prepared and mapped to landing pages.
Create and set up campaigns through your Google Ads account
At this point you are back at the beginning. Go to ads.google.com with your resources in hand and navigate to “Campaign” on the left side, then select “+New Campaign”.
When you click, you will reach a page that will promote you to select your goal. So, feel free to choose your goal or “Create a campaign without a goal orientation”.
If later is selected, you will proceed to the next step which includes various settings.
The Google Network lets you select from a number of different campaign options.
The most common setup for someone in a test phase would just be Google Search Network.
Depending on your budget as well as your desired impressions, you may want to include search partners.
Setting up search partners will open up your campaign in more volume, but may be less qualified than traffic coming directly from the Google search network.
Finalizing Your New Google Ads Ads Account
When you select the new campaign feature, Google takes you through four steps to set up your account.
Once you've done your research and all your settings are done, this will be pretty simple.
- Step One: Campaign Creation and Settings (Complete)
- Two: Ad Group Creation and Keywords (complete)
- Three: Create your first (complete) ad
- Four: Finish and Save (completed)
At this point, you should be asked to add in your billing information as a final step before your ads start firing.
If you're not prompted, visit the device on the top right side of the Google Ads interface, then select billing and payments.
The default payment method is automatic payments that are charged to a credit card after costs start accumulating every thirty days or when a billing threshold is met.
After configuring check advanced settings
Once your account setup is complete and basic campaign settings have been made, you will have the options to modify advanced campaign settings. In the setup phase, you may want to adjust your ad delivery option.
Last stage
Conversion tracking through Google Ads is free and therefore allows you to use many of the “smart” features now available.
While it works a little differently for each type of conversion, you should implement the Google Ads conversion tracking tag in your site's code.
Conclusion on creating a Google Ads account
The steps above are the basics of signing up for a Google Ads account. If you prefer to delegate this to a specialized company, with Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look and a modern layout for your website.
Our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies as well as brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium and small, all projects are important to us.
