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Structuring Your Account to Use Dynamic Text – Part II

Continued from Monday.

  • I am very careful in crafting my ad text so that when the dynamic keyword or phrase is inserted it makes sense to a reader. This is why my keyword trigger lists are small and concise and include a desired reader action such as buy, order, or purchase in the phrase. I will not duplicate these action words in my ad text; rather let the keyword phrase contain them.
  • Bing Ads has recently added some nice new capitalization options that you may not be aware of when it comes to dynamic text use. Here are some examples that now allow you to have total control over how your dynamic text appears in your ad’s title and description. Using the keyword phrase buy roses as an example:
  • {KeyWord} translates into Buy Roses (note the caps on B and R)
  • {keyword} translates into buy roses (note all lower case)
  • {Keyword} translates into Buy roses (note the caps on the B and lower case on the r)
  • There are even options for All Caps where appropriate based on how you capitalize the keyword contained within the brackets. For all examples, please visit the ‘How to use dynamic text to insert keywords in ads’ article to see all examples and uses.
  • Did you know that Bing Ads allows you to use one keyword in an ad that is all caps? So my dynamic text for Buy ROSES would be installed in the account as {KeyWORD:Buy ROSES}. Note the all caps on the word I want to be in all caps in the ad text. If I wanted BUY Roses, I would enter in {KEYWord:BUY Roses} instead. Be aware that excessive use of capitalization is not allowed. Check the editorial style guidelines here.
  • Where possible, but not always, I use {param1} insertion for unique URLs by keyword, and sometimes even {param2} and {param3} for promotional discount text by item. Read more about how to use the different forms of dynamic text here.
  • I always include default text when I am doing dynamic text insertion. For a keyword, use this format: {KeyWord:Buy Roses} note the colon with no space and then the default text capitalized the way I want it to appear. Bing Ads will automatically show your default ad text when you exceed your character count with a keyword phrase you had wanted inserted.

I have personally found that the click through rate is higher on ads where I am using dynamic text insertion and in many cases the conversion rate will be higher as well. If you haven’t tried using dynamic text in your Bing Ads program, now’s the time to do a little testing by creating a small ad group. Use your top converting keywords crafted into meaningful phrases for your program to test if you can boost conversions even more by using keyword and phrase insertion. Remember Bing Ads will bold this special text item when it is inserted into your ad when your phrase matches a search query – drawing the reader’s eye right to your ad!

If you need a Bing Ads savvy account manager, please visit our Bing Ads services page to find out more about how we can help you.

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Structuring Your Account to Use Dynamic Text – Part I

It is a known fact that using dynamic text in your ad program will increase the click through rate and may even increase conversions. A crucial step for success is to properly structure your Bing Ads account to make dynamic text work for you. More often than not, a haphazard use of dynamic text may actually increase impressions without an increase in clicks and can potentially lower your program’s click through rate (CTR). By carefully structuring your account to use dynamic text properly you can increase CTR and improve conversions all at the same time.

Here’s what I do when using dynamic text in a Bing Ads account for best results:

  1. I typically do not add dynamic text insertion ad groups until I have an idea of keywords that generate leads in an account. I wait to set up a dynamic text ad group as it does take time both in creating a keyword list that is workable and time to create ad text that makes sense with the dynamic word or phrase insertion. I want to know what will be workable before I invest the time in set up. Plus, by waiting, I can pick specific high performance keywords or create break out programs based on past performance. I will typically do dynamic text programs in the first thirty days of account creation.
  2. I usually create small ad groups with a very small list of broad and phrase matched keywords when I am creating a program where I will use dynamic text insertion. Sometimes, my program may have only 10 to 20 keywords as I am doing testing. If I am promoting products for a florist, I would not use general keywords such as roses or daffodils, but rather “buy roses”; “buy daffodils” as my keywords and even variations in the same ad group with “purchase” and “order” in addition to “buy”. I may use broad match or just start out with phrase match keywords. The actual match types I will use will be based on what has happened in the rest of the account based on ad spend per day, cost per click, and number of impressions.

Come back to read the rest of the post on Wednesday.

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Did You Know Most Infographics Have Hidden Links?

Infographics are the new web rage, but did you know that most have hidden embedded links in them? The next time someone offers to allow you to use their infographic or solicits your posting their infographic on your website or blog, be aware that you may be unknowingly promoting their hidden link agenda.

The marketing of infographics with hidden links has proliferated so much on the web that Google is now discounting links from infographics. You can read more on this topic in this interesting article on links and infographics at SiteProNews.

First if you don’t know what an infographic is, here’s one as an example on search engines.  They are a visual story that is interesting to look at and contains graphs and data. Usually a site will embed the whole image in a blog post or on a website page. Another view of just the same image so you can see the length.

Here is the crux of the problem:

“…black hat SEO pros saw an opportunity to trick the search engine. They simply create any infographic based on the current trends and link irrelevant text or images back to the target websites. For example, the infographic would be about Euro 2012 but the image of some footballer would link back to a payday loan website. The intention is not to get as many clicks as possible but to generate as many links as possible. So this is how links are hidden behind irrelevant images or text. The links grow as the infographic is shared by real users without noticing the hidden link. While it is no harm for the people sharing the infographic because they find the information good to be shared, for Google a spammy link is being spread which confuses the bots and may make it rank the payday website in the example high based on this.” More information. 

As a result, Google has now discounted links coming from infographics. Although you may still want to use an infographic on your website or blog as they can be interesting and informative, remember that when you link to spammy sites, your own PageRank and website authority are impacted by linking out to poor quality sites.

So, just be aware that really interesting graphic you were just approached to put on your website, may actually have a dark side to it. Just be aware of the down side!

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Business Blogging Tips from a Writing Pro

My firm has been providing blog writing services since 2005. That’s seven years of professional blogging experience. I have recently read and article called “21 Business Blogging Tips from the Pros” and I think the article is a good one and encourage you to read it for more information.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the articles important points as well as many of my own recommendations.

  1. Treat your blog posts as products.
  2. Differentiate your blog from others with new approaches to your content.
  3. Take your own images and create your own videos.
  4. Give all the information, don’t offer part of the picture and sell the rest.
  5. Target your content to your audience.
  6. Focus on your reader first, not search engines.
  7. Be yourself. Let your personality show through your writing.
  8. Answer consumer questions.
  9. Show your full blog post on your blog home page. People will typically not click to read the rest of the post.
  10. Consider limiting what is on your feed to prevent scraper sites from stealing your content.
  11. Explain topics in an easy to understand manner.
  12. Use bullet points and sub headers versus large blocks of content.
  13. Keep your blog posts around 250 to 350 words long.

Do you have other suggestions? Just add them in the comments section below. By the way, if you are looking for a professional blog writing service, I invite you to find out more about the services we offer to help keep the content on your blog unique and up to date.