A great feature of Google Adwords is called Dynamic Keyword Insertion or DKI for short. Implementing DKI with your PPC campaign allows on-the-fly insertion of a keyword from your adgroup into the title or description of your display ad if the search query that served the ad contained the word.
Let’s say you sell apples online. Your product line includes granny smith apples, red delicious apples, and McIntosh apples. Utilizing DKI in your campaign will allow you to present the exact apple that matches the search query, and best of all, it’ll be bold.
In order to make DKI work, you need to define a default word (or words) that will be replaced in the event a query exactly matches your keyword. You define the word by placing braces around it. You must remember that the total character count for the field (title, line 1, or line 2) must adhere to the limits Google sets or your DKI won’t fire.
Let’s look at the title tag. In Adwords you have twenty five characters to communicate your message. Your default title might read Fresh Apples Shipped Free. We will assume your adgroup contains the apple types listed above. In order to make DKI work you would enter {Fresh Apples Shipped Free} But wait, that’s 27 characters! It is 27 characters but since the braces are special operators, they are ignored in the character count. Since you’ve defined your whole title as the default for DKI, anytime someone searches a word or phrase in your adgroup, it will replace the title in your display ad and be bold. If someone searches “granny smith apples” your title will display as Granny Smith Apples. Remember that Google won’t capitalize the words on it’s own so you have to enter them into your adgroup as you want them displayed. Keep in mind that any phrases that are longer than the character limit will not fire DKI and your default ad title will be displayed.
In addition to using DKI in the title tag, you should use it in the ad text and the display URL. Wouldn’t it be nice if the ad for your apples website displayed this as the URL? www.onlineapples.com/Granny Smith Apples
Dynamic Keyword Insertion is just another trick that can help your ad look different than your competitors. I think making your ad stand out is nearly as important as it’s position. If you optimize your ad with DKI and special characters it will likely perform better than the ads around it and will increase your CTR, lower your CPC, deliver more relevant traffic, and raise your overall ROI. Anything you can do to raise PPC ROI will pay you back for the time you spent implementing it.
