Increase AdWords CTR with dynamic keyword insertion

Google AdWords is a great tool to instantly boost your search traffic for specific keywords. For example, if you own a local accountancy firm in York, ranking high for "accountants York" would earn a healthy flow of prospective customers to your site. Using the free AdWords Keyword tool tells us that there are 1,300 individual searches for that keyword per month. That's 1,300 prospective customers that you could greet with a personalised Ad right at the top of their Google search results. But what exactly should you greet them with?

Show them what they are looking for

If your prospective customer does a search for "accountants york" giving them an Ad that uses this in the title will naturally appear more relevant than for example "Mollan and Co Accountants". Have a look at the example below:

Google also adds a helpful touch by making the dynamic title bold so it stands out even more. It might seem a trivial difference but seeing the words you type appear within one of the results has a big impact. I've personally experienced a 20% uplift in CTR when comparing pre-defined titles to dynamic keyword insertion titles.

How to set up dynamic keyword insertion

Within the 'Headline' field you must use a snippet of code to pull the user's query into your Ad title. The keyword will sit infront of your website domain, for example the Ad title might be displayed as "Accountants York - ABC Accountants Ltd". 

You have several variations of code to choose from, two of the most popular are below:

1. {KeyWord: default text} - the keyword will be capitalised, e.g. "Accountants York - ABC Accountants"
2. {keyword: default text} - the keyword will not be capitalised, e.g. "accountants york - ABC Accountants Ltd"

Default text refers to what you want the Ad title to be if the keyword entered is too large to display. It is a fallback for long queries, for e.g. if you used "{KeyWord: Accountants}" and the search query was "best accountancy firms in york" the Ad title would default to "Accountants - ABC Accountants Ltd".

Bottom-line friendly

Google itself recommends to optimise Ads as a greater CTR can result in a lower CPC, and given that you have more visitors to your site you should also see revenue increase. A win-win!

Here's how Google put it: "For ads and keywords that aren’t performing well, sometimes a quality-related change will have more impact than a spend-related change. Focus on improving your Quality Score by optimising your campaign - making sure, for example, that your keywords and ads are specific and relevant to your products and services - and subsequently improving factors like click-through rate (CTR) and landing page experience. By optimising for quality, you can help alleviate budget and bid issues and potentially reduce your costs."

Choose your keywords wisely

The use of dynamic keywords means you can use a single Ad structure for multiple keywords. Amazon and eBay are notorious for this. To make the most of this excellent tool and ensure your CTR does indeed benefit make sure the keywords you are bidding on are completely relevant to your Ad description and landing page. Less relevant keywords appearing against your domain name (often company name) will look odd and actually result in a lower CTR.

It is also highly recommended you begin using dynamic keyword insertion with only exact keyword matches. I.e. you will want to target only searches for "accountants york" and not any broad matches including that keyword for e.g. "accountants in new york". If you use broad keyword matches your Ad might appear for searches like this which would be irrelevant and have a negative impact on CTR and CPC. (Thanks to Adrian Bold for this suggestion.)

Other helpful resources

To help you further check out these insightful articles on dynamic keyword insertion.

• Dynamic Keyword Insertion – The Ultimate Guide
• Google Adwords Dynamic Keyword Insertion
• Google AdWords: Using Keyword Insertion

Have you tried dynamic keyword insertion?

What has been your experience? Have you noticed an uplift in CTR? Do you prefer a pre-defined AdWords title? Where have you seen dynamic keyword insertion used really well or badly?