Over in PPC Discussions an interesting question regarding dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) was posed:

“What I want to know is this - since having the search term in your advert improves its relevance (particularly in the headline), does DKI ensure a very relevant advert, or the opposite (does Google penalize you or reward you for using DKI to put the search term in, rather than writing a genuinely relevant advert)?”

Good question. There are two topics to touch upon here: dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) and quality score (QS). DKI within your ad does not directly affect your QS (positively or negatively). Your QS is determined by the relevancy of your ad text, keyword, and even ad group, to the user. This relevancy is derived from your ad’s click-through-rate (CTR). As long as you are improving your CTR, you are improving your QS. If DKI does this, then keep doing it!

However, here’s a rule of thumb (and I called Google to confirm my suspicion): if your ad group is set up so that it contains related keywords you, should be able to compose relevant ad texts that do not need to utilize DKI. If you find yourself having to use DKI in order to get every keyword in your ad group within your ad text, then you may have too many keywords in your ad group. Google rewards specificity and relevancy within ad texts with a higher QS. Perhaps you could take that one ad group, find themes among the keywords, and break it down into two or three ad groups? Then you wouldn’t need DKI. And if you wanted to, you could run A/B testing within each of these ad groups to see if DKI actually does increase your CTR. It’s an idea.

With the new algorithm changes from Google and Yahoo!, having a good quality score is an added challenge in the PPC world; and your ad text is a big part of having a great quality score. Here are five tips I have used personally that helped me gain control of my accounts through ad text testing.

1. Call to action: Speaking with Google and Yahoo! frequently, they suggest that when leading customers to a page where they need to fill out a form or download a whitepaper, tell the customers they also will do this in your ad text. For example, “Download our whitepaper on e-mail marketing today.” That way, users know what they’re getting into before they click. I think it’s a great idea if you’re working for conversions; if you’re just driving clicks, it may turn someone away. Use your “calls to action” wisely. This test seems to be working on some of my accounts. Nothing dramatic yet, though.

2. Keyword smothering: Yahoo! has been adamant about having your keywords smothered in your ad text title, short description, long description, and URL in order to get a great quality score. These guidelines make it harder to get creative and pull people in. I tested Yahoo!’s theory on keyword smothering. In one instance, I cleared stats for all three of my ad texts for one ad group. The first one had my keyword in every line of my text, including my URL. The second had just one instance of my keyword. Number three had the keyword in only the title and URL. The results? Strangely enough, the third ad text had a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.19%. The first ad text, with the keyword smothered, had a CTR of .93%. The second, with only one instance of my keyword, had a CTR of 0.55%. Since this seemed to prove Google and Yahoo! wrong for the time being, I will be testing this theory more in the future. But it’s something to try for yourself.

3. Dynamic ad text: Make sure you learn how to use dynamic ad text correctly before putting it into place or your ads could look strange to the user. If you have a lot of different types of keywords within one ad group, this is the best time to use dynamic ad text testing—although if you have many different keywords in one ad group, they should really be broken out into separate ad groups, but that’s another discussion. In four out of five cases in which I have tested dynamic ad text, it proved to work better than non-dynamic ad text—although I don’t usually use dynamic ad text in the descriptions, only in the title. I feel the user may catch on to our logic, and then be turned off.

4. Get creative: Take a look at your competitors’ ads. Are they just like yours? If you’re testing, you shouldn’t be afraid to get creative. You want to find the ad that works best, right? Use punctuation if you can, such as question marks or exclamation points. But most of all, get into your customers head and think of some words that might catch their attention. Marketing studies show that men tend to follow high-tech buzz words, while women are looking for deals.

5. Numbers: I’ve heard this has worked for some people but not others. Putting phone numbers in your ad text just might help your click-through rates. Some people may be looking online just to find a phone number. This might catch their attention and they may possibly click through. Or the number might just catch someone’s attention more than another ad does. You can also put in percentages or money values. I have an ad that consistently performs better and the text goes something like this: Over 40% of e-mails don’t reach the in-box. If something is on sale, put the sale price in the text. For example: Personalized Vases on Sale, $24.99. You get the point.

My point overall is that perhaps smothering your keywords in your ad text won’t always do the trick. In my experience, when I get creative is when I see the majority of my ads performing better.

One of the best features of pay-per-click advertising is the ability to test. There are numerous tools and options in AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and adCenter that allow PPC advertisers to test nearly every piece of their account. But, admittedly, this barrage of bells and whistles could make the average-Joe-PPC-beginner go crazy – or worse yet, abandon PPC altogether! I would recommend to any advertiser interested in testing their PPC variables to begin with ad texts. As such, today’s PPC primer is on learning the basics of testing ad copy.

Why Should You Test Ad Copy?

Many of you reading this post will already know the answer to this question, but it never hurts to have a reminder. Testing ad copy will allow you to incrementally experiment with variations in your messaging to determine which ad texts have the highest click-through-rate (CTR) and/or conversion rate. This process is often referred to as A/B Testing or “split testing” and is extremely important to the overall health and growth of a PPC account.

How to Get the Most Accurate Results

Ensuring that your PPC account is operating with the correct settings is very important to obtaining accurate results from your testing. What this means in terms of testing ad copy is that you must have your ad delivery options set to rotate evenly (all ads in a test will accrue the same amount of impressions). In Google AdWords, this is quite simple. Enter one of your campaigns and click on “Edit Campaign Settings.” From here, scroll down to the “Advanced Settings” section and click the radio button next to “Rotate.”

This setting will now rotate your ads evenly over time. The alternative is to let Google determine the best ads in your ad groups by CTR alone – which takes all control of an accurate test away from you!

Yahoo! has a similar feature with their “Optimize Ads” option. To get accurate testing results: enter one of your campaigns, select all of your ad groups and click the “Optimize Ad Display” button. This will bring up a dialogue box with the options of saying yes or no to optimization. Just say no.

This is the simplest way to adjust the Yahoo!’s ad delivery options. However, you can also access this feature through each ad group’s settings.

MSN’s adCenter is a step behind when it comes to testing ad copy. At this time, adCenter automatically optimizes your ads based on CTR. There is not an option to turn this off.

How to Get Started

Let’s assume that you only have a single ad in your ad groups – this will become your control ad with which to test against. Use the control ad as your starting point when writing new ads. If I can make one point clear it would be this: test one change in ad copy at a time. If you want to update the headline, change only the headline. If you want to update a call-to-action in line 2 of the description, change only the call-to-action, etc. Making incremental changes will allow you to quickly make the right decisions based on the outcome of your split testing. In this example, I am testing the effectiveness of my headline:

What Should You Test in Your Ad Copy?

The list of ad text variables is quite extensive and can vary dramatically depending on the product, service or niche an ad is written for. To get you thinking about what kinds of things to test, here is a great list from the AdWords blog:

• Different emphasis: product description, call-to-action, or promotional offer
• Including the brand name versus simply describing the offering
• Including the price in ad text versus including a discount or other special offer to differentiate your business
• Including an audience-specific message such as ‘Perfect for Couples’
• Placement of certain messages in your ad text: headline, line 2, or line 3

When to Determine a Winning Ad

As a rule of thumb, I typically wait until both ads (or however many ads are being tested) have all generated at least 30 clicks. This is to ensure that each ad has had equal opportunity to be displayed and will therefore provide accurate data. For those who are more statistically inclined, there are other options. For one, you can use the Teasley Statistical Calculator which will give a much more accurate depiction of your split testing endeavors.

When you’ve determined a winner in the testing of your ad copy, it isn’t time to quit and move on. No sir – it’s time to write a new ad and test another variable in your ad text! Make testing ad copy a priority on your PPC management task list. Keep up-to-date on your tests and consistently try to out-do yourself in terms of creativity and trying to think like your customers. Good luck, and happy testing!

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