SOP 138: How to Set up a Google Search campaign

1. Head to https://ads.google.com/ and log in to your account.

2. Select an account that you want to create for the search campaign.

3. Click “New Campaign”

On the “Overview” page if you have NEVER created a campaign before:

On the “Campaigns” page if you have EXISTING campaigns:

4. Select “Website traffic” since the purpose of this campaign is to drive traffic to your website.

Note: There are 7 goals to choose from. For a search campaign, you’re only able to choose sales, leads, website traffic, or “Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance” as your campaign goal. You should choose a goal that best fits your primary objective.

• Sales — Drive sales via the app, phone, or online store.

• Leads — Collect leads and encourage them to take action.

• Website Traffic — Increase visitors to your website.

• Product and brand consideration — Encourage people to explore your product or services.

• Brand awareness — Reach a broad audience and build awareness for your business.

• App promotion — Get more installs and interaction for your app.

• Local store visits and promotion — Drive visits to local stores. For example restaurants or dealerships.

• Create a campaign without a goal — Create a campaign without seeing a goal's recommendations.

5. From the list of campaign types, select “Search”.

6. Next, select “Website visits” from the list and type your website URL.

7. Add your website URL:

8. You will see a section to set up conversion tracking. Skip this for now as you can set it up later following: SOP 25: Adding Google Ads conversion tracking to a site

9. Click “Continue”.

Google Ads will automatically fill in a default campaign name based on your previous selections. However, you can edit this and give it a name that helps you identify the campaign. For example “Search - Increase Web Traffic”.

In “Networks”. This is an optional setting. However, since we’re running a search campaign, it’s recommended to select “Search Network” so your ads can appear on other Google-owned networks/websites.

Note: If you want your ads to show on the Display network, create a separate campaign for it.

In the bid settings, set the bidding focus to “Clicks” (recommended) followed by the maximum cost-per-click bid limit. Tick the box below and enter an amount.

Set a daily ad budget.

1. • Note: Take into consideration that there might be a slight fluctuation in your daily spending and it is possible that on some days your campaign might overspend a little bit more than the daily budget you have selected.

   • Note 2: The daily budget you set should be based on the number of users on the remarketing list. The larger the list, the higher the budget you should set.

   • Note 3: If you’re just getting started you can select a budget between $20-50/day, you can edit and adjust this later on.

Set the bidding focus to Clicks (recommended).

Important: Campaigns focusing on clicks are highly recommended when setting up a new campaign since Google doesn’t have any conversion data yet. Once you have some traffic and campaign data in your account, only then it’s recommended to run conversion or conversion value-based campaigns.

Set a Maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) Limit to control the maximum amount to spend for each click. You can estimate the maximum CPC limit for search campaigns by following the “Bid Strategy for Increasing Website Traffic” section of SOP 145.

To learn more about bid strategies for ad campaigns in general, refer to SOP 145: Determine a bid strategy for new Google Ads Campaign .

Next, under “Customer acquisition”, it is recommended to tick the box below to bid for new customers for your new campaign. Alternatively, if you already have an existing customer list, you may leave the box empty and click “Next”. By default, your campaign bids equally for new and existing customers

[Google Ads new update] If you are new to Google ads and do not have an existing customer list or would like to target more new customers than existing customers, click ‘define existing customer list’.

Next, click ‘audience manager’ and update your customer segments. You may refer to the type of audience segments here before following further instructions to edit your customer list.

On the campaign settings page:

10. Select locations to target.

11. Select the language that your customer speaks.

12. [Optional] Select audience segments.

13. Click “Next”.

14. In the ad group page, Google will help to add relevant keywords to your ads. Click “Get Started”:

15. Copy and paste your company website link. Google will automatically suggest a few keywords by scanning your website.

16. Enter a few words that are related to your products or services. Click “keyword suggestions” when you are done.

17. Enter words or phrases that have been used to match your ads. You may refer to SOP 147: Perform Keyword Research for Google Ads for more information.

18. Next, add the details and creatives of your assets including the final URL, headlines, descriptions, business name and logos, site links, and callouts. You should be able to see a preview on your right. Choose any ad display and device to preview as shown below:

Final URL — Make sure the URL is correct and loads as intended.

Display path — Customize the URL being shown in the ad. Note: This doesn’t have to be an actual URL.

Headlines — Write headlines within 30 characters. You can write up to 15 headlines. Note: All your headlines won’t show at the same time, rather, Google will rotate your headlines based on the user’s device or search query.

Description — Write a description within 90 characters. You can write up to 4 descriptions.

19. Add site link extensions for your ad. Fill in the ad copy details for your site link extensions. Then click “Save”.

Sitelink extensions are additional links and ad copy that show up below your main ad. They take up larger real estate and allow you to direct people to specific pages on your site.

Add new callouts based on your business information and then click “Save” and “Apply”.

Ad URL Option — Add UTM parameters to your ad URL for refined tracking. To create UTM campaign links, follow SOP 006: Creating UTM URLs to Track Your Campaigns .

Note: If you have linked both your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, and have enabled auto-tagging or campaign URL options (newly updated) under the campaign settings page, there’s no need to add UTM parameters as auto-tagging will do this for you. Please refer to step 20 below on how to set this up.

20. Once completed click “Done”.

21. Next, you will be directed to the budget page, where you will need to key in your average daily budget and click “Next”.

22. Finally, Google will review your campaign settings. Click “Publish campaign” on the bottom right corner of the review page.

23. On the sidebar click “Settings” → “Campaign URL Options”.

Enter the landing page URL for your campaign.

Enter the final URL suffix. This field allows you to enter parameters that will be attached to the end of your landing page URL in order to track information.

Customize the parameters.

Test it to check that your tracking is set up correctly.

Click “Save”.

Note: You may refer to this page here for more information. This is the new update from Google Ads and it no longer labels this feature as “auto-tagging”.

[NEW] Next, another recommendation would be to activate “Dynamic Search Ads”. This setting uses your URLs to automatically create ads to match people’s searches. Enter your website URL and preferred language and click “Save”.

That’s all! You should start seeing your Google Ads traffic information inside Google Analytics in the first 24 h after your ads have started running.

Note: If your ad is still under review after 2 business days contact Google to

resolve the issue.