How should a Google Ads account be structured?
Structure follows your services and budget, not a template someone sold you.
Structure should map to the services you sell, the margins they carry, and the geography you serve, with as few campaigns as the account can get away with. Over splitting a small account starves every campaign of the data it needs to optimize.
Campaigns are budget containers
The practical rule: split into a separate campaign only when you need a separate budget, a separate bid strategy, or a separate geography. If two services can share a budget and you would never fund one at the expense of the other, they can share a campaign. Splitting for tidiness is how a $3,000 per month account ends up with nine campaigns, each spending too little to ever exit learning.
Ad groups are relevance containers
Group keywords that deserve the same ad and the same landing page. If you are writing one set of ad copy that has to cover roof repair and gutter installation, the ad group is too broad. If you are building 30 ad groups of one keyword each, you are fragmenting data for a Quality Score benefit that modern matching mostly removed.
Structure around margin, not alphabet
Most accounts we audit fund every service equally. That quietly directs the most money to the cheapest, least profitable work, because those terms are usually cheapest and convert fastest. Decide which services you want more of, then let budget reflect that.
Signals it is time to rebuild rather than tinker
- Several campaigns have been in learning more or less permanently.
- Conversion tracking has changed definitions and old data is not comparable.
- Budgets do not match current business priorities and have not for a year.
- Nobody in the account can explain why a given campaign exists.
- Ad groups contain keywords that need different landing pages.
A rebuild costs you a learning period, which is real. Google's help documentation notes a bid strategy re-enters learning after composition changes and can take up to around 50 conversion events or three conversion cycles to settle. Rebuild when the structural problem is costing you more than that reset will.
Related: How does LevelUp Digital approach paid media strategy?, What paid advertising platforms does LevelUp Digital manage?, What is the minimum ad spend you recommend?, and our PPC advertising services.