How To Set-Up Keyword Insertion For Google PPC Campaigns

Online advertising is a field that can keep marketers awake at night contemplating whether or not they made the right decision when running a pay-per-click campaign.

Choosing the right match type, advertising copy, keywords, correlating landing page and achieving an ideal quality score can be a lot to envision.

Don’t forget to check dynamic keyword insertion off the list of necessary components when creating a PPC campaign.

dynamic keyword insertion

David Ogilvy, one of the most famous marketers of all-time, stated, “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Even though Ogilvy wasn’t marketing when PPC was a dominant player in the advertising space, his theory still holds true today.

Online advertisers should take Ogilvy’s theory to heart and start putting more focus into the title, as it is an instant attention grabber, and to do that Dynamic Keyword Insertion is a great place to start.

What Exactly is Dynamic Keyword Insertion?

According to Google, dynamic keyword insertion is an advanced AdWords feature that dynamically updates your ad text to include one of your keywords that matches a customer’s search terms.

Let’s say you are an apartment complex in the Dallas area bidding on different suburb keywords that can convert for your community. The first step you would take for DKI is to add the primary keyword code as shown below in your ad headline.

It was determined for this apartment community that rent will yield high quality traffic because people will likely be in the market to buy an apartment when searching for this keyword.

Headline: Rent {KeyWord:Apartments}

Google will pick up on the code when it is placed in the title of your advertisement and dynamically switch it to match your keywords within Adwords.

Keywords:

  • Frisco Apartments, to drive traffic for The Residences at Starwood
  • Irving Apartments, to drive traffic for Knightsbridge Apartments
  • Dallas Apartments, to drive traffic for Villages of Addison

Example Headline: Rent Frisco Apartments

Primary Benefits

What is the benefit of dynamic keyword insertion? If advertisers are searching for a wide variety of keywords, Google has the capability of serving the exact match search query that the user is looking for, which will improve the relevance of your ad. Dynamic keyword insertion is known to increase clicks because it forces your ad to reflect back to the user exactly what they are looking for, word for word.

Be careful about character limits. According to WordStream.com, you have 25 characters in the headline and 35 in the bodylines of your ad. Make sure your terms will fit within those constraints. If your search is too long to fit within the headline, it will revert back to the original keywords in the headline.

Downside

Sometimes, dynamic keyword insertion can seem out of place and awkward to the person conducting the search. Imagine seeing a McDonald’s commercial for a Big Mac during the Victoria Secret fashion show. Sometimes, dynamic keyword insertion can have a similar feel.

If you were to bid on competitor brand names, with dynamic keyword insertion, this could appear within the title of the advertisement. While it is legal to bid on branded keywords, it is not legal to bid on another company name in your headline.

Conclusion

Always run A vs. B tests to determine which headline performs the best. Perfecting dynamic keyword insertion is just another component that can improve your conversion count while lowering your cost per acquisition.

Remember what Ogilvy said about the importance of a headline. Even though dynamic keyword insertion is an advanced feature, it is worth implementing based on the exposure it receives.

Jason Parks

Jason Parks

Jason Parks is the President and Founder of The Media Captain and Cleveland Marketing King, two digital marketing and development agencies based in Ohio. He's a VIP Contributor for Entrepreneur.com and has been featured in the New York Times, Yahoo News and Search Engine Watch on digital-marketing topics. Jason's agencies have helped hundreds of businesses increase their online exposure.

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