Expert’s guide to dynamic search ads: How to make them work for you //

Dynamic Search Ads are a powerful tool in Google Ads that’s been around for a long time. Since 2017, I have liked and used these ads. DSA campaigns work differently from regular search campaigns. I’ve seen people make mistakes with best practices and decide DSA doesn’t work.

It’s a pity, because they can produce great results – when used correctly. This is especially true when used in conjunction with regular search campaigns. There are some adjustments that you can make to get the most from both types of campaigns.

As a fan of Dynamic Search Ads, I would like to use this post to explain what you should know about them to ensure you get the best possible results.

I’m covering:


  1. What are dynamic search ads?

  2. How to Setup Dynamic Search Ads

  3. 5 ways DSAs can work for you

Let’s get started.

What is Dynamic Search Ads? How are they different than regular search ads

Instead of using keywords to create campaigns, Dynamic Ads use content from your site for targeting and some ad copy.

With Dynamic Search Ads, the search engine will respond to a relevant query with a chosen landing page from your website and automatically-generated ad copy that closely aligns with or matches the query.

Google claims that this will help you to identify searches that you might have missed with your normal search campaigns, and also keep your ads relevant by identifying what people are searching.

Dynamic Search Ads: How to Setup

As I began writing and taking screenshots, it became clear that the process of setting up a Dynamic Search Ads Campaign had changed.

How to create Dynamic Search Ads with Google Ads.

Start by creating a campaign and selecting your goal.

Google Ads Dynamic Search Ads are compatible only with the campaign goals that are compatible with Google search.

Choose the search network, and then finish configuring your campaign settings.

Here’s where things start to get silly.

The guided setup does not allow you to create any Dynamic Ads. Not the URLs, and not the ad group.

Click next to publish your campaign after completing the rest of the campaign setup. Do not add any keywords or ads.

You’ll see an alert if your interface looks like mine. It will say that you cannot publish the campaign containing these mistakes. But you click publish anyway.

After the campaign has been published, go to Settings, click on Additional Options, navigate to Dynamic Search Ads Settings, add your URL, and select your targeting. We’ll discuss these options in the next section.

There’s still one thing to do before you can start running Dynamic Search Ads. Technically, DSA controls are live at the Ad Group levels. Standard is the original Ad Group that you created when you clicked Publish. You can leave it or delete.

You’ll have to change your first setting for any new Ad Group from Standard to Dynamic in order to run Dynamic Search Ads.

It’s hard to believe that Google has made it so difficult to access these settings. But now you know the steps to take, let’s move onto the next topic.

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Google Dynamic Search Ads: 5 Ways to Make Them Work For You

Google Dynamic Search Ads: Five things you need to know.

1. Determine if your website is suitable for DSA campaigns

You need to be sure that Dynamic Search Ads will work for you if you want to succeed. It’s one of the rare areas where I almost completely agree with Googles suggested best practices for DSA.

Google’s algorithm can only see your website if it has a lot of text that describes your business, products, and services.

You might want to reconsider your DSA approach if your website is lacking in wording and has a poor title, meta description or relies primarily on images.

You may be missing opportunities to optimize Google Ads. Instantly find out the



Google Ads Performance Grader


.

2. Understanding how Google/Microsoft selects your URLs

You should know the process by which the search engines get the URLs they use to create your Dynamic Ads campaigns.

When you added your website URL to the Settings tab of your incomplete campaign, you had several options.

Let’s look at each one in more detail.

Use all URLs Google has to offer plus page feeds

It will be the default setting for any new DSA campaigns. This means that Google can use any page on your website to create an ad. This might sound scary but it is usually safe to use.

If I choose to opt in, I will make sure I exclude a few pages from my dynamic targets campaigns.

This list is not exhaustive, but should give you a good idea of which pages new clients will be landing on.

It’s easy to exclude pages from DSA campaigns:

You can create a negative dynamic ad targeting under Dynamic Ad Targets. This gives you the same control as a regular target but excludes instead of focusing on specific targeting.

Use whatever controls you feel comfortable with to exclude as many pages as possible.

Only use URLs that come from a page feed

You can also use URLs from page feeds you have provided.

A page feed is simply a CSV file that contains URLs from your website. This can be used for Dynamic Ads. You can add as many or few pages as you want to your site. By selecting the second targeting options at the campaign-level, Google will only be able use those pages for DSA campaigns.

It’s easy to create a page feed. I start by creating a sitemap for my website and then removing all URLs that I do not want to be included. This may be an impossible task depending on the size of your website. You would be better off using all URLs and creating powerful exclusion filters.

You can upload your list by going to the top menu and selecting Business Data. Make sure you are on the Data Feeds section in the left navigation.

Click the “+” button and select Page Feed. Then, follow the instructions to upload.

Google will display whatever URLs it chooses from the list you have given them permission to show.

You can either exclude pages from DSA by using Negative Dynamic Targets, or you can change the permission list so that only Page Feeds are allowed.

3. Learn how to create ad copy for DSA campaigns

The two lines of description are the only part of the ad that advertisers can input.

It’s crucial to share information that is relevant, compelling, and impactful with your customers. Like all other ads.

This also means that Google will create some of your ads, such as the headlines for your ads.

You can now review the headlines Google uses for your ads. The Search Terms Report under Dynamic Ad targets will show you the search terms, headlines and landing page Google used in your ads. You can’t change anything, but you can review them.

The screenshot is from a real client account and has been blurred. I wanted to show where most of the headlines for DSA ads come from.

You can view the source code by clicking on the right-click menu and selecting View Page Source.

The page I found in that code
<br /> What do you know? It matches.<br />

It’s not true that will always match, but you’ll find that the headlines Google chooses are often very similar (if not the same) as the meta title on your website. Keep an eye on your headlines and if necessary, consider changing the page titles so that they better fit your ads. If your company’s search engine optimization team does not yell at it, then you can do this.

4. Prevent cannibalization

Dynamic Ads’ stated goal is to discover new queries that are not your keywords. It’s actually part of the Benefits section.

It’s true that this might seem nice in theory, but in practice it doesn’t always work out.

Most accounts that I have seen running DSA campaigns and search campaigns target many of the same keywords as the other campaigns. Google claims to have a system in place to prevent this, but it still happens. It happens a lot.

It’s good to know that this is a simple problem.

Every time I launch a DSA Campaign, I add all the Exact Match (and Phrase match) Keywords from my existing Search campaigns into a single negative keyword list. Then I apply this list ONLY to the DSA campaign. This ensures that none of my current keywords can be targeted.

You may think it is strange, and some Google representatives might say that you don’t need to do this, but you will thank yourself later for your cleaner reports of search terms.

5. Add negative keywords

For some of you, my last note may not be new.

Negative keywords can be used in DSA campaigns even if you don’t use keywords to target your campaign.

You can add negatives to your search terms report under Keywords just like you would with a normal search ad campaign.

Dynamic search ads: How to make the most of them

Dynamic Search Ads remain one of my favorites for covering all search advertising, but can be finicky. They require a lot of attention to detail that is not required for regular search ads.


Here are five tips to help you create effective dynamic search ads:


  1. Determine if your website is suitable for DSA campaigns

  2. Understand how Google/Microsoft selects your URLs

  3. Learn how to create ad copy for DSA campaigns

  4. Take action to prevent cannibalization

  5. Add negative keywords

This article will hopefully help you get the most out of your DSA campaign by ensuring you have the correct setup and expectations for performance.

The post Expert’s Guide for Dynamic Search Ads – How to Make them Work for You first appeared on WordStream.

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