For search engines and their users, relevance is key to quality and performance. However, the current implementation of Quality Score makes for some tricky challenges in creating adverts. What’s the solution? Be creative!
In addition to click-through rate, the Google quality score (and similarly Bing’s and Yahoo’s counterparts) will look at how well the ad copy is related to the search query. Thus it’s key to include at least part of the search phrase in the ad copy.
An alternative title to this post is “Why your display ads won’t translate into good search adverts”.
Two reasons for having the search phrase in the ad copy:
- The keyword will get a relevance boost by default (leading to a higher quality score)
- The phrase will get bolded and draw attention of users and likely an increased CTR (leading to a higher quality score)
It is however not always optimal to have unique ad copies per keyword:
- It increases the complexity of the campaign, and automation tools (like your home-made excel function) can create ad copies that while keyword stuffed for relevance, reads poorly and have an adverse effect on click-through rates or branding implications
- Prevents efficient split-testing of creative for low impression and click keywords as they take too long to gather enough data
So what are you to do?
- Get your in-house PPC expert or Agency intimately involved in the creation of ad copies, and don’t rely on simply translating display adverts to search
- Understand that while an ad copy might not always read grammatically correct, there is possibly good reason for it, as it may still perform where it counts (in search engine terms) – CTR and CR
- Do not simply resort to using Dynamic Keyword Insertion. Firstly, this won’t help your quality score relevance metric, and secondly it’s very easy to get it wrong with horrendous results
What are your best PPC ad copy tips? Please share in the comments.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
hi, Magnus, how are you?
very much enjoying your posts!
In my experience, successful search PPC performs best when done quite *un*creatively!
1. tie the ad very closely to the keywords.
2. repeat the search terms as often as possible.
3. use 2 ads at a time & increment the winner.
dan
Hi Dan, Thanks for your comment and glad you enjoy the posts.
That’s some good best-practise tips. Agree you can many times be quite scientific in your approach to PPC. But I still argue that you need to be quite creative to fit in the search phrase in a way that just don’t get it bolded, but also improves the click-through rate by reading well. Especially on the longer-tail phrases.
RT @nilsson_magnus: High Quality Score Adverts Requires Creativity http://www.bravenewme.com/2010/02/high-q... #ppc
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