Search Account Built Before It Spends a Euro

A new search account should not spend its first euro until the conversion signal has been verified end to end, and that verification is five to ten working days of work before launch. It is also why accounts built this way reach a defensible target CPA in month two rather than month six: bidding automation is only as good as the events it is fed, and an account launched on a thank-you page tag counting duplicate loads will spend three months learning the wrong lesson. Week one is tracking, not campaigns: Native Google Ads conversion tags for bidding and GA4 for reading, not the reverse, because imported GA4 conversions arrive later and modelled. Enhanced conversions for leads with hashed email and phone. Consent Mode v2 configured against your actual consent platform and tested with consent granted and denied, since without it European conversion counts arrive incomplete and every subsequent bid decision inherits the hole. For logistics and B2B accounts where a qualified quote lands three weeks after the click, offline conversion import from your CRM, with the click identifier stored at form submission; the qualified stage becomes the primary conversion and the form fill drops to secondary. One primary conversion per account. Everything else is observed. Structure: Ad groups by intent, not by keyword count. Single-keyword ad groups have been the wrong answer since close variants arrived and I will not build them. Phrase and exact at launch, with a negative list assembled from real search terms rather than a downloaded template. Broad match enters only once the account carries roughly thirty conversions in thirty days and a negative structure that has survived contact with actual queries. Responsive ads with no more than two pinned headlines. No Performance Max in the first month, because it conceals the search terms you are paying to learn; I will recommend it later on merit and say why. Landing pages: I write the brief for the page each ad group points at and the message match it needs. If the page cannot change, say so at the start and I will build against what exists and tell you what that costs in the plan rather than in month three. Nonprofit specifics: I build Google Ad Grants accounts and run them against the two-dollar bid cap and the five percent click-through requirement rather than pretending those constraints do not shape what is winnable. I will also say plainly when a grant will not move the organisation's real goal. For most fundraising the paid search line is small, and being honest about that is better than an account gamed to keep the grant alive. Not included: Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and display. Landing page design and development. Copy in languages I cannot read: I work in English and Portuguese, and for other markets I brief a native writer, review structure, keywords and negatives, and leave the ad text to them rather than approving something I cannot judge. Account handover in week one, because the build is worth exactly what the first sixty days of search term review make of it. Who this is not for: Businesses with no working form or call tracking and no intention of adding it. Teams who want a keyword list agreed up front and then left alone. Anyone whose sales cycle produces fewer than about fifteen qualified conversions a month with no earlier event that predicts them; automated bidding has nothing to learn from that, and neither do I. Reporting: Weekly during the build and the first sixty days, then monthly, with the search terms I excluded and the reason for each.