A Google Ads account consists of three hierarchical levels: Account (billing and access settings), Campaigns (budget, targeting geography, and network settings), and Ad Groups (collections of related keywords and ads). Well-structured accounts organise keywords into tightly themed ad groups where all keywords relate to the same intent, enabling highly relevant ads that match search queries closely — improving Quality Score and reducing CPCs. Poor account structure — broad ad groups containing unrelated keywords — is one of the most common causes of inefficient Google Ads performance.
Account structure is the foundation of Google Ads performance. An account with hundreds of keywords lumped into a single ad group will have low Quality Scores (ads cannot be relevant to every keyword), wasted spend (irrelevant impressions for broad terms), and poor conversion tracking (no visibility into which keyword themes drive results). Investing time in proper account structure at setup typically delivers 20-40% improvement in cost efficiency.
Best practice account structure
- Campaign level — separate campaigns by business goal, product type, location targeting, or match type strategy
- Budget allocation — budgets are set at campaign level; group keywords requiring similar budget in the same campaign
- Ad group level — each ad group should target one keyword theme (not 50 different keywords); 5-20 keywords per ad group
- SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups) — extreme organisation with one keyword per ad group; maximum relevance but high maintenance overhead
- Ad copy — each ad group should have at least three ad variants (RSA format) tailored to that group's keyword theme
- Naming conventions — consistent, descriptive naming makes account management and reporting much easier
- Negative keyword lists — shared lists applied at campaign level to prevent cross-campaign cannibalisation
Best practice is five to twenty tightly related keywords per ad group — all sharing the same search intent and all addressable by the same ad copy. Some practitioners advocate Single Keyword Ad Groups (one keyword per ad group) for maximum relevance, though this creates significant management overhead for accounts with many keywords. The Smart Bidding era has somewhat reduced the importance of granular ad group structure (since Smart Bidding handles bid variation at the auction level), but maintaining thematic coherence within ad groups remains important for Quality Score and relevance.
Yes — branded keywords (searches for your company name) and non-branded keywords should always be in separate campaigns. Branded keywords have much higher conversion rates, lower CPCs, and different performance dynamics from non-branded. Mixing them in the same campaign makes performance reporting misleading and budget allocation harder. In reporting, branded campaign performance should always be reported separately from non-branded — blending them creates an artificially optimistic view of non-branded performance.