As I mentioned in part 1 of the DSA series, Dynamic Search ads can be very lucrative but they do require the same (if not more) optimizations than regular search campaigns. In this post, I’ll walk you through a few tips on how to maximize the return on your dynamic search campaigns.

For starters, I highly suggest optimizing your campaigns (almost) as you would regular search campaigns. By that I mean: add bid modifiers, dayparting and exclusions. Routinely test and copy and be sure to utilize mobile optimized copy if you are running on mobile devices.

In addition to the basic optimizations, here are a few tips for making the most of your campaigns:

Segment, Segment, Segment

Segment your targets into tightly themed groups to have as much control over ad copy and query mapping as possible. This also helps when adding negatives, which are crucial. You can set targets based upon different factors including categories, page titles, landing pages, and site content. You can also exclude products using the same criterion. For instance, excluding site content containing “out of stock” is common to ensure you aren’t spending money to advertise products that won’t make a sale.

As your campaigns run, keep a close eye on performance and you may find opportunities to segment your targets even further.

Add Negative Keywords and Then Add Some More

No surprise, negative keywords are an integral part of dynamic search campaigns. DSAs are great because of the coverage but they can also bring in some less-than-relevant and high funnel traffic that you might not want to bid on. Proactively Add negatives to your campaign before you even activate it. Here are a few different types of negatives that you might want to add before you launch your campaign:

o   Irrelevant terms (especially those that Google deems relevant to your site). I start by adding negatives that are already in my other campaigns. I also like to place your URL in the Google Keyword Planner to see which keywords Google suggests I bid on. Based upon Google’s keyword suggestions, I’ll proactively add any that are irrelevant.

o   Top performing keywords. Google won’t match queries to your DSA campaign if they are the same as an exact match keyword in the account. However, phrase and broad match keywords are another story.  If a query could’ve mapped to a phrase or broad match term in your account but the dynamic search ad has a higher rank, it will map to the DSA.  Because there is more control in regular search campaigns, I’d suggest protecting your top performing phrase/match terms from competing with a DSA.

o   Highly regulated products. Since DSAs will dynamically generate a headline and a destination URL, you might want to negate any products that are heavily regulated to avoid any issues.

After activating your campaign, you’ll of course want to monitor search query reports and continue to filter out irrelevant traffic. Add negatives early and often!

Feed Your (Non-Dynamic) Search Campaigns

I love DSAsfor the growth potential that they provide but, ultimately, regular search campaigns have more control.  For that reason, I like to take converting keywords and add them to my regular search campaigns. Once I’ve done that, I will negate them in the dynamic search campaign.

Manage Your Messaging

Because dynamic search ads are, well, dynamic, it’s important to put some controls in place. Make sure your messaging can be applied to any of the products that are within your ad group’s targets. Otherwise you might accidentally serve up some disjointed ads and mismanage expectations.

It’s good to take some precautions around misleading promotional headlines. For instance, if your products are not on sale and/or you don’t offer certain promotions, you may want to negate irrelevant phrases (such as free shipping) that may cause you to get clicks with high bounce rates.

If your products are regulated by any manufacturer messaging guidelines, you’ll want to take some extra precautions. As I mentioned in the negative section, you might want to entirely exclude specific products that have more sensitive regulations than can be adequately controlled by negatives.

Control and Optimize Your Landing Pages

When you set up a dynamic search campaign, you should be sure to exclude any pages that aren’t meant for potential customers.  You should also exclude the pages of any products that you prefer not to advertise through DSA.

Once the campaign is running, you can review the landing page report to see what landing pages are being served and how they are performing. You can use this data to optimize your pages and to add additional landing page exclusions.

Bonus: since landing pages are matched to queries based upon the organic index, dynamic search ads can help you to quickly aggregate data to see which pages Google deems relevant to various queries, which can highlight opportunities for SEO.

Leverage Audiences

You can leverage audiences through DSA, just the same as you would for an RLSA campaign. This is especially beneficial because DSAs can help to ensure that you’ll have wide coverage on queries that are relevant to your site, which serves to re-engage consumers who have already shown interest.

What tips do you have for optimizing and managing dynamic search ads? I’d love to see them in the comments!