How to advertise on Google, step by step

Google Ads will publish a campaign with settings you never chose. They are not hidden: they are on the screen, already set, and most people click straight past them. This guide builds a Search campaign from an empty account, one step at a time, and stops on the four boxes worth reading before you press Publish.

Before you start: three things

• A page where a customer can act. Call, book, buy or fill in a form.
• A way to count when they do it. Google calls that a conversion, and “at least one conversion goal is required to create a Search campaign.”
• A daily amount you are comfortable spending while you learn. Step 9 explains how Google actually spends it.

The ten steps, in the order Google asks

The four boxes that arrive already set

None of these is wrong. Each one decides where your money goes, so decide it on purpose.

After you press Publish

Ads are usually approved within one business day, and it can take a few days before they start showing.

One question for a campaign you already run

Open its settings and find Networks. Is Include Google search partners ticked? And did you tick it?

The film, as text

Chapter 1 of the course, word for word, as it is spoken in the film above.

Google Ads will happily publish a campaign with settings you never chose. Not hidden ones. They're right there on the screen, already set, and most people click straight past them. In this video, we build a Google Ads campaign from an empty account, one step at a time, in the order Google asks for it. And at every step, we'll stop on the box worth reading before you press Publish.

This is chapter one of a free course on running Google Ads yourself. Six chapters for Google, then the same for Meta. Every step comes from Google's own help pages, read the week this was made.

Before you start, you need three things. A page on your website where a customer can do something. Call, book, buy, or fill in a form. A way to count when they do it. Google calls that a conversion, and a Search campaign needs at least one conversion goal before you can create it. And a daily amount you're comfortable spending while you learn. We'll come back to how Google spends it, because it isn't quite what the word daily suggests.

Step one. The account. Go to ads dot google dot com and sign in with a Google account. Google asks for your business name and your website, so it can fill things in for you later. It offers to link your YouTube channel and your Business Profile. That only speeds up its suggestions, so it's your call. Then comes the most useful line in Google's own guide. Create the account before you create a campaign. You can skip every recommendation to create one. Next, billing. Pick your billing country, and check the time zone carefully. Your reports, your statistics and your billing all follow it. The account type starts as Organization. Change it to Individual only if that's right for tax where you are. Then add a card or another way to pay. Google may place a small temporary hold on a card, and it may ask for a small prepayment, which it says is fully refundable.

Step two. A new campaign, and a goal. Open Campaigns, press the plus, and choose New campaign. Google asks what you want. Sales, Leads, or Website traffic. Pick the one that matches the page you chose earlier. A booking page is leads. A shop is sales. For the campaign type, choose Search. These are the text ads on Google's results, and they don't need any images or video. Then choose the conversion goal you'll count, and give the campaign a name you'll still recognise in six months. Google saves all of this as a draft as you go, so you can stop and come back.

Step three. Bidding. Google puts it simply. Targeting decides who sees your ad. Bidding decides what you want those people to do. If you want calls, bookings or sales, Google's own suggestion is Conversions. If you only want visits, it's Clicks. Conversion value is for when each sale has a known value. Impression share is about how often you show, not what happens after.

Step four, and the first box. Networks. There's a tick next to Include Google search partners. Google's help page says it plainly. When you create a campaign for the Search Network, search partners are included by default. Search partners are other sites that show Google's ads, and Google doesn't tell you which website your ad appeared on. Below it is Display Network. Tick that, and if Google sees a chance to show your ad on other sites, Google will take it. Neither choice is wrong. But both decide where your money goes, so decide them on purpose.

Step five, and the second box. Locations. You pick a country, a region, or a city. Most people stop there. Open Location options, and the default is Presence or interest. In Google's words, that reaches people who are in your area, regularly in it, or who have shown interest in it. So someone far away, searching about your city, can see an ad from a plumber who only works in that city. If you only serve people who are actually nearby, the other choice is Presence. People in, or regularly in, your locations.

Step six. Languages, audiences, and assets. Languages should match the words in your ads. Audiences are optional, and you can leave them for later. Assets are the extras under an ad. Links to other pages, short lines about your offer, your phone number. Three of them fill in for you by default. Sitelinks, callouts, and calls. Read what Google filled in, because it goes out under your name.

Step seven. Ad groups and keywords. An ad group is one product or service, with its own keywords and its own ads. Google's example is a furniture shop with a group called Couches. Keywords are the searches you want to show up for. You type one on each line. And here is the third box. Google's help page says broad match is the default match type for all keywords. Type a word plainly, and your ad can show for a broad set of related searches, not only the one you wrote. Put quote marks around it for phrase match. Square brackets for exact match. And a minus sign in front shuts a search out. Google calls that a negative keyword. Google also says it's critical to use Smart Bidding with broad match. If you keep broad match, keep that in mind.

Step eight. The ads. Each ad needs a final URL. That's the exact page people land on when they click. Then headlines and descriptions. A responsive search ad takes up to fifteen headlines of thirty characters, and up to four descriptions of ninety. Google mixes them and learns which combinations work, so write each headline to make sense on its own. And Google recommends at least three ads in each ad group.

Step nine, and the fourth box. The budget. You enter a daily budget, and Google calls it an average. Its help page says that on a given day, your campaign might spend up to twice your average daily budget. Over a month, it won't spend more than thirty point four times that daily amount. So set the daily figure knowing that a single day can reach twice it.

Step ten. Review, then publish. Google lists anything that may hold the campaign back, like billing, missing keywords, or a page link that doesn't work, each with a Fix it button.

Before you press Publish, go back to the four boxes. Networks, with search partners already ticked. Location options, set to Presence or interest. Keywords, matching broadly unless you change them. And a daily budget that a single day can double.

Ads are usually approved within one business day, and it can take a few days before they start showing.

Here's a question you can answer right now, if you already run a campaign. Open its settings and find Networks. Is Include Google search partners ticked? And did you tick it?

Next chapter: what Google Ads actually costs, and how the auction sets your price.

And if you'd rather not build it by hand, Admiral reads your website, builds a campaign like this one, creates it paused, and turns it on only when you say so. Start free at meetadmiral.com.