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Turn visitors into customers with Dynamic Landing Pages

By Reena Shohet | Published on 07/30/2008 | Improving Conversions , Pay Per Click Basics |

How to use dynamic keyword insertion to build effective landing pages


Many of you would have used dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) in your ad copy, but did you know you can employ the same tactic with your landing pages to increase conversions?

DKI used appropriately in your ad copy can significantly raise your click through rates.

In the same way, DKI can be used in your landing pages to convert more visitors into customers.

DKI is a powerful targeting tool you can use to create highly relevant content that is more enticing to your visitors.

DKI+Ads = More CTRs
The effect of DKI used to increase ad relevancyDKI+LPs=More Conversions
The effect of DKI used to increase relevancy in landing pages

So what exactly is Dynamic Keyword Insertion?

DKI is a tool that allows you to insert a token into your ad or landing page copy, which is then automatically replaced by the search term the user entered; the one that triggered your ad.

Why use Dynamic Keyword Insertion?

There are four excellent reasons to use it, DKI:
  1. Helps you achieve more relevancy to increase your landing page quality, which has a direct affect on your keyword Quality Score
  2. Assists you to target your landing page content to your visitors for greater conversions and ROI
  3. Makes it possible to create unique ads, matched to your landing pages
  4. Saves you significant time by being able to use one template with huge volumes of search terms, rather than creating separate landing pages for each search term
Relevancy is such an important part of your campaigns, and for good reason. Being relevant to what your visitors are seeking gives you a much higher chance of success.

Let's break down this process:

  • Say for example that you sell music and one of your search terms is 'cheap music cds'
  • A searcher types in the search query 'cheap music cds'
  • Your ad appears relevant to their search, ie. it includes the terms 'cheap music cds'
  • They click through to your landing page which mentions and continues the theme of 'cheap music CDs'
By giving your visitor exactly what they're looking for, you'll likely be rewarded with a conversion (or other positive action). You achieve this by tailor-making your landing pages specifically to each visitor, using DKI to pull it off.

How do I use DKI in my landing pages?

If you've got tens, hundreds or thousands of keywords - manually creating a landing page for each one could be time-consuming at best and downright impossible at worst.

Google Adwords, Yahoo! and MSN adCenter all recognize the ?kw={keyword} variable which can be appended to the end of your destination URL. Normally, you would then insert some php coding into your landing page code.

Now the main problem with using the search engine variables is that you don't have complete control over the search terms that are inserted into your page.

For example:

  • You are promoting the book "Baby Signing for Dummies" (yes this is a real book)
  • You're bidding on the search phrase 'baby signing for dummies'
  • A customer searches for 'baby dummies' which triggers your ad on broad match
  • Your resulting landing page now reads with 'baby dummies' dynamically inserted into your text. They're now reading the author's journey on 'baby dummies' and it doesn't take them long to realize they're in the wrong place somehow.
Doesn't make much sense does it? The bounce rate could be spectacular and very costly.

The same blooper happens if you're bidding on misspellings. Imagine a whole page of text where the main search term is misspelled. It doesn't convey an image of professionalism, trust and a quality product.

The moral of this story is that keyword insertion through search engines is an imperfect science and can produce unexpected results.

Leashing the DKI Monster

How would you like to:
  1. Set-up your campaign, so DKI only inserts the specific search terms that you want inserted in your landing pages?

  2. Dynamically create an unlimited amount of targeted landing pages for each of these search terms?

The great news is there's an easy way to accomplish all of this, which also gives you complete control over what your landing page ends up looking like.

Let me step you through:
  1. Enter the main keywords you want to bid on, eg. electrician

  2. Add specific keywords in a separate list to target your main keywords further and build long tail search terms, eg. "dallas"+"electrician"

  3. Use the variables for your search terms within your landing page to dynamically insert your broad keywords, specific search phrases or the combination of both. You can also use it to insert campaign names, ad group names and match types anywhere on your landing page.
Result of DKI

Highly targeted, dynamic landing pages created with SpeedPPC's unique DKI method


You can go really granular with this method and generate a landing page for every one of your search terms.

No more 'baby dummies' inserted for 'Baby Signing for Dummies'.

This process is simple and only a matter of minutes with SpeedPPC, a patent-pending Campaign Building system created specifically for PPC marketers.

SpeedPPC has a unique system of inserting values (not just for keywords) relevant to your campaign and your users' searches. This process gives you full say over what appears in your ads and landing pages.

You can see exactly how it works here.

How does search engine DKI compare with SpeedPPC DKI?

Using search engine DKI can be an amusing (and sometimes tragic) blooper reel. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful feature. However, it's too "loose" and there's way too much room for the wrong search terms to creep in. Your ads and landing pages can wind up looking like nothing you'd ever intended.

Essentially, this is the difference:

Common to both processes is that you're bidding on a list of search terms. Then:

Search engine DKI: Inserts the search terms that your user enters in the search query. Depending on your combination of keywords and match types, the search term that the user enters may not be exactly the same as the search term you bid on, but it's enough to trigger your ad.

Eg. I've lost my dog and I enter a search for "lost dog" to get all the options I can to find him. This ad appears in the SERP:

Ad with DKI

This is DKI gone wrong. It's nothing to do with what I was looking for, however because the advertiser has bid on a search term that relates textually to the one I entered, it triggers their ads. I'm sure they didn't intend for this to happen, but controlling it's another story.

This is costing them in 6 ways without even blinking:
  1. Lowering their click through rate
  2. Lowering their keyword Quality Score because of reduced click through rate
  3. Lowering their account Quality Score because of the reduced keyword Quality Score
  4. Paying for ad clicks that don't result in conversions, eg. curious searchers could click the ad but they are not conversion-ready
  5. Lowering their conversions and ROI
Realistically, you can't predict every variation of your search terms that a searcher is going to enter. Therefore, the resulting search term inserted in your landing page is open to a lot of misinterpretation and misspellings.

SpeedPPC DKI: Inserts your search word or phrase exactly as you bid on it. There's no room for misinterpretation by the search engine bots in this process. Your dynamic landing page is accurately targeted and results in exactly what you had intended.

The other SpeedPPC benefits

Besides increasing your profits with higher-converting landing pages, SpeedPPC has a multitude of other benefits. Using its methodology you can:

  • Achieve high quality PPC campaigns effortlessly at "warp speed"
  • Increase click through rates with unlimited creation of unique ads for every keyword
  • Track PPC campaigns with pin-point precision by generating unique URLs for every keyword
  • Reduce the time spent on PPC marketing - eliminate months of work in minutes!
  • Boost Quality Score with super-tight relevancy chains built into your campaign structure
  • Reduce minimum bid costs with increased Quality Score and long-tail search targeting
  • Perform all of the above in over 12 search engines

Like to see a demonstration?

You can watch several demos of SpeedPPC in action by visiting the SpeedPPC website. See first hand how you can revolutionalise your pay-per-click marketing and bank on its success.


About the Author

Reena Shohet is a PPC marketing specialist and the Product Manager for SpeedPPC. Increase your profits by overcoming the Top 7 Challenges of PPC marketing. Discover how and sign up for a FREE Email Course to Improve your PPC marketing - visit www.SpeedPPC.com.
 

Comments

Comment #1 (Posted by Farid S.) |
I called Yahoo about this yesterday and they said they do NOT support dki in destination URLs and I quote their FAQ page:

Can I use the dynamic keyword insertion in my destination URL?

Dynamic keyword insertion works only with titles and descriptions of ads, not for URLs at this time.

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/faqs/camaccstruc/dynamic_ads.html


Farid S.
10000scholarship.com
Comment #2 (Posted by Mark Walters) |
Reena,

Thanks for that lesson. It all makes sense to me now.
Comment #3 (Posted by Reena Shohet) |
That’s right. The dynamic insertion is usually handled prior to uploading in the search engine. For example, in SpeedPPC your campaigns are created, including the URLs with DKI values for the dynamic landing page. The campaign is then built in SpeedPPC with an export file in the format of the search engine’s template. By the time it’s uploaded to Google, Yahoo or MSN the URL is already hard coded and the relevant value is inserted to match your keywords and ads.
Comment #4 (Posted by Wrong) |
You are wrong about Yahoo supporting the {keyword} parameter. Technically, you can put something=abc&kw={keyword}&anything=elseyouwant&...

but the keyword is not inserted into the variable to then be passed to your landing page. Yahoo uses {OVKEY} or you can use {OVRAW} to get the keyword from Yahoo but {keyword} will do nothing.

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