Adwords Advice

[EcommerceSite]

From Adwords perspective, I don't think it matters for them, it comes down to person preference. My preference for what you have offered would be service level with adgroups and keywords for each city, that seems like it would be the easiest to manage in the future.

[David-Kley]

I would set up the location targeting at the city level. For example, set up an ad group that only targets one location, and has ad text directed at that location. Do this for the three areas that they serve.

This allows you to target the specific locations. If they have "city pages" (pages that are setup to target only one service/location) set up on their website, then create multiple ads based directly around that location and link back to that specific page. This will not only target the ads directly at people in that area, but also give your ads a much higher quality score due to the direct targeting. If they do not have city pages setup, either create some or link back to the page that lists the service area in a nice landing page style/conversion page layout. Pay special attention to the layout of the pages, as the pages you link back to will want to have some type of dominant conversion area or call to action.

Hope this helps!

[Ray-pp]

Generally speaking, if you setup your AdWords account to match the Site's Navigation structure, then you get a clean and manageable AdWords architecture. I almost always setup my client accounts by matching their navigation structure. If that structure is confusing, then the site's navigation structure is probably also confusing and needs to be optimized.

[YNWA]

Thanks.

From a campaign point of view, I can only set locations in their, so should I have location campaigns or service locations?

If someone in London searches and my London campaign is heavy London keywords and copy, then that must benefit over a Service campaign targeting 3 cities and only splitting them via Ad Group, Ad Text and Keywords?

But in doing so, am I restricting the power of Campaigns with small towns as locations as their viewers could live on borders or just outside and not see their ad or one closest to their location?

[David-Kley]

I would set it up under locations, and have 3 separate ad groups under each for the services they provide. This will let you set the location targeting at the campaign level for each. If the town on the outskirts of each location is small enough to not be listed in the Google targeting system, then I wouldn't worry about it. Most of the small surrounding towns get grouped into the larger cities anyway. Either that, or people search using the larger city in the query because they get better results

For example:

Ad group 1.
LOCATION 1 >

Service 1
Service 2
Service 3

Ad group 2.
LOCATION 2 >

Service 1
Service 2
Service 3

Ad group 3.
LOCATION 3 >

Service 1
Service 2
Service 3

[YNWA]

So at campaign level, do I target UK, or the 3 cities mentioned?

[Ray-pp]

I like to target a major city and then use location bid modifiers to increase/decrease the bids in the appropriate locations. If your ad copy can be generic enough and still successful, then it could save you a lot of time by targeting London and modifying the bids for successful cities in the immediately surrounding area.

If, however, those smaller cities have enough traffic then it would be best to set them up with their own campaigns to have the highest level of targeting and focused ad copy possible.

I agree with David's suggestion of setting up location specific campaigns and including the services offered as ad groups, with the addition of bid modifiers as appropriate.

[David-Kley]

The only reason I would suggest against going too far outside the area is people might get turned off if the ad or company does not look local.

[MonicaOConnor]

You can't technically restrict targeting at the Ad Group level. Well, correctly anyway. If you are just using location derivative key terms you might have the correct ads showing.

At the campaign level you can tell Google to only show you ads in certain cities. That is what I would do. Set up three campaigns for the three cities and then you don't necessarily have to geo target the individual terms, you only have to geo target the wording in the ads.

[David-Kley]

I would target the three cities mentioned. As Monica puts it, you can only control targeting at the campaign level. My apologies for posting incorrect information, and saying you could at the ad group level.