By Julianne Bohl

When we take on a brand new paid search account or start to manage an existing paid search account, the immediate and most fundamental task the Search team undertakes is hashing out the account structure. Solid and consistent account architecture makes campaign management easier and more efficient while enhancing the campaign’s performance, and the program’s growth.

The NetX Paid Search Team has developed a list of best practices to apply when evaluating account structure. Of course, every advertiser is unique and therefore every account will vary. But these are the best paid-search practices that we stick by, no matter what the account:

1. 1. Separate your campaigns by device: Keep the desktop campaign separate from the mobile campaign, which is separate from tablet campaign (which is separate from whatever comes next!)
2. 2. Separate campaigns by channel: Run search ads and display ads in independent campaigns
3. 3. Split Brand and Non-Brand campaigns: Keep brand terms in one campaign and non-brand terms in another.
4. 4. Use geo targeting: Set up the account to take advantage of localization, whether it’s international, national, regional, etc.
5. 5. Mirror the advertiser’s website: This ensures keyword scalability, simplifies destination URL implementation, and creates a consistent brand message
6. 6. Use standard campaign-naming conventions: This is critical for efficient management, cross-team knowledge transfer, reporting and analysis, and scaling
7. 7. Create tightly themed ad groups: This increases ad relevancy and click through rate (CTR), increases conversion rates, and allows for precise and targeted ad testing
8. 8. Have a back-up ad running: You never want to go dark if an ad gets disapproved
9. 9. Remove duplicate keywords: This decreases intra-account competition and increase your search ad campaign’s efficiency
10. 10. Separate ad groups by match types: This creates easy-to-tier bids and improves both campaign management and account efficiency

Jump ahead a few years and I anticipate that these 10 best practices remain just that: best practices for setting up your paid search accounts. If anything, as new products, targeting capabilities, and ad format are introduced, I believe this list will grow. It’s critical that our paid search accounts are capable of changing and expanding at the speed of the industry. This list is a great start to ensuring that your paid search architecture creates efficient campaign management, optimizes paid search performance, and enhances campaign growth.

Julianne Bohl is the Director of Search Advertising for NetX.