5 Reasons to Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Your Ads
by Megan Fields • October 19, 2014
Get more clicks with these fancy tricks!
Dynamic Keyword Insertion. What the heck does that even mean? I’ll bet your face is looking a little bit like this right now:
If this was your reaction, don’t worry. You’re not alone! That’s exactly how I felt when I first heard the term. But really, it’s quite simple. Let me break it down for ya.
Dynamic keyword insertion (aka DKI) is an advanced feature provided by Google AdWords that takes a customer’s search query and dynamically updates the text in your ads to include at least one of the keywords searched.
I know, it sounds more confusing than it really is, but I’ll let you know why you need to use it to your advantage. Here are five reasons why you should add the dynamic keyword insertion feature to your ads:
#1 – Higher Relevancy
Since ads are dynamically updated to include a user’s search query, your ads become directly relevant to the thing that is being searched for.
Here’s an example. Let’s say that you’re a business that sells chocolate. You can see that these ads were set up with dynamic keyword insertion. Under the keywords section are the different products/keywords that your business is going after.
After implementing DKI, this is how your ads will show up to the user that is searching for your offer.
If a user searches for dark chocolate, the ad will read “Buy Dark Chocolate”, and so on. If the keyword that a user searches is too long, then the ad will automatically go to its default headline which is what is inside the squiggly brackets.
So in this case, if a user searches for “gourmet chocolate truffles”, the headline will say “Buy Chocolate” because of the 25 character limit.
#2 – Get Higher Click Through Rates
When search queries match wordings in ads, Google automatically bolds them. Which makes them stand out more.
People are more likely to click on ads that stand out to them and are relevant to what they are searching for. This is why DKI can lead to higher click through rates.
[Tweet “Using DKI can lead to higher CTR, but could it also lead to this? #PPC”]
#3 – The More Relevant, the Higher the Quality Score
Ahhh, quality score. We hate it and we love it. It can be our best friend or our worst enemy.
As PPC marketers, we are always trying to increase our quality score because it can lead to lower cost-per-clicks, higher ad positions, and lower cost per conversion.
One of the best ways we can raise our Quality Score is by focusing on the relevancy factor that goes into it. Through implementing DKI in our ads, we can ensure that our ads are directly relevant to the term that’s being searched. This is represented by the screenshot example above.
Someone searched “buy dark chocolate”, and an ad for dark chocolate came up. Quality Scores can directly affect whether your ads are showing up, how they’re performing, and how much you’re paying for clicks, so it’s a very important factor to consider!
#4 – You Can Sometimes Get Around Character Limitations
You know when you think of a genius headline for an ad and then get super disappointed when it’s over the allowed character limit of 25? Yeah. The worst. We’ve all been there.
When using dynamic keyword insertion, Google is a little bit more lax with advertisers and will sometimes allow your character limits to go over the 25-character limit. Here’s an example of an ad that was able to push past the character limit and get up to 29 headline characters, using DKI:
This is definitely not a guarantee, but every once in a while Google will let you slip in an ad with a higher character limit headline when using DKI in your ads.
[Tweet “Have you ever seen your DKI do this to your #AdWords ads? #PPC”]
#5 – Dynamic Keyword Insertion Saves You Time
Time is something we can never have enough of as PPC marketers. Creating ads with dynamic keyword insertion makes it easier for an advertiser to create unique ads for a large number of keywords.
This means that you don’t have to spend tons of hours making sure that every one of your ads is directly related to your different ad groups. We all know that time is money. And by using this feature, you will save time, which saves you money. Woo hoo!
Alright guys, it’s time to get to work! If you haven’t already done so, implement dynamic keyword insertion into your ads where it makes sense to do so. I promise you won’t regret it. Then, make sure to do a happy dance when you’re all done!