How to Create Your First Search Campaign

By Ramial Aqeel - Wednesday June 3, 2026 Share (Twitter) WhatsApp Summarize ChatGPT Perplexity Grok Google AI A lot of first campaigns fail before they launch. Not because Google Ads is hard. Because it’s easy to start in the wrong place.

You might jump straight into keywords and ad copy, skip the foundations, and a month later your clients are staring at an invoice and leads they can’t even verify. I run Google Ads for SMBs and I see similar oversights far too often, and this article covers the guidelines I wish more people followed. 1.

Set up conversion tracking first Before you touch keywords, you need to know what a “win” looks like. A win is a form submission, a phone call, a booking, a purchase. Whatever it is, it must be tracked, and it must be done before traffic starts hitting the site. I like to use Google Tag Manager and set up all goals and integrate with my Ad Account, and GA4.

If this is the only thing you do on this list, then you’re halfway there; a campaign without conversion tracking is a campaign you cannot optimise. You and the algorithm will both be guessing blindly. 2. One offer per campaign A campaign is a budget container. That is its real job.

If you or your client sells three completely different services, you don’t want one campaign trying to fund all of them. The cheapest clicks will eat the budget, and the highest value service will starve. Consolidate by default but also segment when it makes logical sense.

For your first campaign, choose the service or product with the clearest buying intent. Emergency plumber beats “plumbing tips.” Dentist near me beats “teeth whitening guide.” Money usually lives at the bottom of the funnel. 3.

Tight ad groups, themed by intent Inside the campaign, ad groups exist for one reason: to match the keywords to the ad and the landing page. A common beginner move is to dump 200 keywords into one ad group and call it done. The ads then read generic, the relevance score tanks, and CPCs creep up, whilst most of these keywords never see an Impression.

Better approach. A few ad groups, each with a few tightly related keywords. If a keyword would need a different headline to do it justice, it belongs in its own ad group. “Emergency plumber” and “Boiler installation” both convert, but they are not the same search. 4.

Keywords: skip broad match for now Match types are where new advertisers burn a lot of the money. Start with phrase match and/or exact match only. Broad match has improved, but it still pulls in traffic you do not want, and you will not have the data or the negative keyword list to control it.

Once you have a few months of conversion data, you can test broad match with Smart Bidding. Not before. A practical starting structure for each ad group: 3-5 exact match keywords for your highest intent terms 3-5 phrase match keywords for variation and discovery You are not trying to capture every possible search.

You are trying to win the ones most likely to convert. In many cases your Phrase Match keywords will capture broader traffic anyway, and aggregate your data, giving the algorithm more flex. 5. Negative keywords from day one Negative Keywords tell Google Ads what keywords and phrases you do not want your ads to appear for.

Before you launch your campaign, open Google Ads Editor or a notes file and start building a negative list. Be sure to add the obvious, generics covering things like free, amazon, how to, courses, eBay, and beyond. Then pivot towards industry specific negative keywords.

You probably won’t want to show up for DIY terms, or replacement parts for your Emergency Plumber campaign, but both can overlap so it is best to cover this from the onset. Then check the search terms report daily for the first two weeks and add every irrelevant query you see.

This single habit is the difference between a campaign that improves and one that bleeds. 6. The settings most beginners get wrong A handful of defaults will quietly drain your budget. Change them before you press save. Networks: turn off the Display Network and Search Partners for your first campaign. They mix in traffic that distorts your data.

Above: A screenshot from Google Ads showing the Network setting section of a campaign Location targeting: set it to “Presence: people in or regularly in your targeted locations” not the default “Presence or interest.” Otherwise, you pay for clicks from people who searched for your city from a distant area. Ad rotation: leave it on “Optimise.”

Devices: do not bid adjust on day one. You have no data yet. Content Suitability: Filter out low-quality placements from the get-go. These take a few minutes yet may save more money than most optimizations work people do later. 7. Bidding and budget For a brand-new campaign with no conversion history, start on Manual CPC or Maximise Clicks with a