Google Ads Search Campaign Setup Checklist

Megan Pritts

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There’s so much to remember when setting up a Google Ads campaign. How many of you have launched a campaign and come back to it the next day to find you’ve been running ads nationally instead of statewide? It happens to the best of us… but it won’t happen again!

The next time you prepare a search campaign, you’ll have my handy Google Ads Checklist. Set everything up and run through the info below to make sure you’ve checked everything off the list before you publish.

If you prefer to download as opposed to bookmark, feel free to save the PDF below.

Google Ads Search Campaign Setup ChecklistDownload

Before you get started, set up your Google Ads account.

Keywords

Keyword Research

One of the most important elements of your Google Ads search campaign is your keywords, so make sure you do your keyword research before getting started.

A good keyword is:

Tools to help with keyword research:

Tip: Don’t just use Google’s Keyword Planner. It’s helpful, but it doesn’t give you all the good keywords. Try some of the other keyword tools to see what else is relevant. Most of them use Google’s API so you’ll actually get more information than you do from the Keyword Planner. You can even try AI tools like ChatGPT, but don’t forget to brainstorm! The human side of keyword research is so important!

Add Negatives

Keywords with high search volume are great, but they waste money if they aren’t relevant. Negative keywords prevent your ad from showing for that certain word or phrase. You can find these while you’re doing keyword research.

For example, if you own a deli and are promoting turkey sandwiches for lunch, you’ll want to add “recipe” as a negative keyword. Why? If you do a Google Search for “turkey sandwich” you’ll see a ton of recipe pages. You don’t want to spend your allotment on people who want to make their own sandwiches, especially if you’re limited on budget.

Acronyms are another common issue. If you’re using them, remember to check for other events, organizations, and products that use the same acronym and add negative keywords as needed. For example, AMA can mean Ask Me Anything, American Marketing Association, and a whole host of other things.

Remove Duplicates

Google’s AI is pretty smart. It understands word order and similar words so, as a best practice you shouldn’t have duplicate keywords in syntax or match type. Removing these will keep you from competing with yourself.

Learn how to quickly find duplicate keywords using Google Ads Editor.

Learn how to remove duplicates in Google Sheets.

Review Match Types

Pay attention to the match types you’re using. Google recommends starting with Broad Match and watching your Search Term reports to find negative keywords to add. This can work for some advertisers, but if you’re a small business, this is a strategy I would avoid because it can be costly.

If you have a small budget, I recommend using Phrase and Exact Match because they are more specific. If you need to expand your keyword list or reach more people with a specific keyword, try Broad Match, but watch your Search Term reports carefully to make sure your ads aren’t showing up for irrelevant terms.

No More than 10 Keywords to an Ad Group

The best practice is to keep no more than 20 keywords in each ad group. That’s not a typo. 20 is correct. But I’ve found that 10 or less is the sweet spot. When you have fewer keywords, they are more relevant to the ad copy and the landing. When that happens, you get a better Quality Score and pay less per click. Stick with 10 or less.

Ads

Check that Landing Pages are Working

Always check that your landing page is functional (the page loads, isn’t redirected, and doesn’t lead to a 404 or 500 error) before adding the URL to your ad. It’s common for people to add the URL without checking the page and then they waste money sending people to a page that doesn’t work. 

If you’re using a ton of landing pages, paste them into a URL checker for easy bulk-reviewing. You want the result to be a 200 status code.

Spell Check

Start writing your ads in Excel or somewhere you can check your spelling quickly. Misspellings can discourage people from clicking on your ad and can waste money. Trust me, I’m one of those people.

Optimize Your Campaign Structure

There are 3 important things to take away from this section:

If your search ad shows up in search results, that means a user was searching your targeted keyword or a similar variation. To increase your chances of a higher CTR, make sure that keyword is in your ad copy.

You’ll also want to make sure that keyword is on your landing page. This helps the user recognize that they’re in the right place and makes them more likely to stay, or even convert.

If your keyword is in your ad and on your landing page, you’re likely to have a better Quality Score which can lower your CPCs and save you money.

The structure of your campaigns will really help with this. So organize similar keywords into ad groups and write the ads afterward.

For example, if I’m running ads for a Google Ads course, my campaign setup might look like this:

Campaign Name: Google Ads

Obviously, no one is going to learn Google Ads in two hours, so ignore that facetiousness, but the campaign structure is right. My similar keywords are grouped together and are in my ad copy within the same ad group.

It’s also going to be easier for me to write ad copy simply by looking at my ad group name.

Use Proper Case

Proper Case Looks Just Like This.

Each first letter is capitalized (except for unimportant words like “a” or “the.”

Every test I’ve ever done on this shows that ads written in proper case perform better than ads in any other format. It helps people understand what’s written faster.

Set Page Paths

Path 1 and Path 2 act as folders for your domain. If I set my domain as example.com and set Path 1 as “courses” and Path 2 as “google-ads” then the URL in my ad will look like this:

example.com/courses/google-ads

The more descriptive that URL is, the more information you give users about the page they’re going to land on. This can also help to increase your ad’s CTR.

Define CPC Bids, Bid Strategies

When you’re researching keywords, you’ll see a column for CPC. Pay attention to this because it tells you about how much you can expect to spend on that keyword. You’ll want to use that information to set your CPCs when setting up your campaigns.

You can also use a Bid Strategy like Maximize Clicks and let Google choose your bid.

Use Ad Extensions

Ad extensions are tidbits of content you can attach to your ads. Some examples are Reviews, Sitelinks, Callouts, and Locations. Adding extensions gives the user more information and can increase your CTRs.

More clicks can lead to more conversions, so put some effort into these.

Campaigns

Set Budgets

Know how much money you have to spend per day and set your daily campaign budgets accordingly.

Triple-check your math and use scripts if necessary to control the budget.

Specify Location Targeting

Please, please, please don’t forget to define your location targeting! If you forget this step, it’s easy to waste money on people that can’t even buy what you’re selling. Remember to choose your targeting carefully. Here are the options:

In addition to specific locations, you can set targeting methods for where your ads can show and who can see them. Location options let you include or exclude people based on:

My recommendations:

Add excluded locations

Just because you added a target location doesn’t mean people outside of that location can’t see your ads.

I always exclude other countries or states to protect my clients and it saves my budget.

For example, I have a client who operates globally but they’re working on growing their audience in the U.S. so we mostly target ads to U.S. users. To save on budget, I looked at their Google Analytics geo report to get an idea of the top countries sending traffic and excluded them from the ads.

Specify a Language

Don’t leave language blank. Set it to the language your website is written in. Make sure ads written in English point to a page written in English.

Select the Ad Rotation

Only one ad from your account can show at a time. If you have more than one, you’ll have to set the ad rotation to determine how your ads appear in search results. You have two options here:

Optimize is the default option. I recommend testing both options to figure out what works for you.

Select “Search Network Only”

By default, your search ad can appear on Google sites, Google Partner sites, and other placements like mobile phone apps.

When you set up a search campaign, Google will opt you in to the Search Network, the Display Network, AND Google Partner sites to give your ads the most visibility possible. If you have a small budget, this is not a good option because you’re going to spend more money faster. You also have more responsibility in keeping up with Display Placements.

If you’re a small business, make sure you’re only running your search ads on the Search Network. You’ll also want to disable Partner Sites.

Set an Ad Schedule (Optional)

Sometimes, it makes sense to run ads within certain hours. For example, if you have a call center or certain hours when someone can get in touch with you, you might want to set your ads to run within business hours only.

If you don’t set an ad schedule, your ads can run at all hours of the day and night. Don’t discount this idea though. I’ve gotten a lot of conversions at 2am for certain types of clients.

Consider what time of business you are and what hours make sense for people to learn about your offerings.

Exclude Your IP Address

This is so important! Exclude your IP Address so that you and your employees don’t see your ads running. If they see the ad in the wild, it skews your campaign data; if they click it, you’ve wasted money.

You are not your target audience, so do yourself a favor and go to whatismyipaddress.com and copy your IP Address into the exclude section in Campaign Settings.

Instead, use the Ad Preview tool within Google Ads to check if your ads are showing up.

Set Target Devices (Optional)

When you set up a new campaign, your ads will run on all devices by default. If you want to target mobile, tablet, or desktop individually you’ll want to change your device targeting.

Turn Off Auto Applied Recommendations

There’s a list of 22 Google recommendations that are turned on by default when you create an account. Many of these items will cost you money like adding a keyword or changing bids. I highly recommend turning all, or most of these, off.

A potential client came to me a while back and was looking to improve her account and find someone to manage her ads. She said a Google Rep told her to turn on all of these recommendations. She was a small business owner who didn’t have a lot of time to manage her ads so she accepted all of the recommendations and it tanked her sales to 0. She had no idea what happened. When I audited her account, that was the first thing I checked. We turned off the auto apply recommendations and got her account back on track while we worked on ways to further improve the account.

To turn off Auto Apply Recommendations:

Know Your KPIs and Track Conversions

Everyone wants to have a successful advertising campaign, but how will you track success? It’s important to know what your goal is and determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) before you launch.

When you know your KPIs, set up conversions. A conversion is an action on your site that is valuable to you. That might be a phone call, email, form submission, purchase, etc. If there’s a specific action you want users to take on your site, make sure you’re able to track it before you set up your campaign. 

Megan Pritts

Megan is a marketing and advertising consultant. She helps growing businesses increase brand awareness, leads and sales through SEO and SEM.