How to Create Top Performing Google Dynamic Search Ads

By Stefanie Parks Articles November 1, 2022

A dynamic search ad uses the content for your website to target your ads to certain users. Within these ads, both the keywords and the headlines are dynamically generated, making them very easy to set up and also extremely effective.

It’s best to use dynamic search ads when you have a large website that contains a lot of content. They help to ensure that all of the content on your site is getting exposure and that there aren’t any gaps in your campaigns (which is especially helpful when you offer a ton of different services or sell many products). Not only that, dynamic search ads are excellent for doing keyword research. If you’re not sure what customers are searching for to find you, a dynamic search ad will help you better understand this and also find search keywords that you may not have thought of.

We’ve implemented dynamic search ads for many of our clients and we also use them for our in-house eCommerce brand, DermWarehouse. We’ve seen great success with this ad type, so I’m going to walk you through exactly how to set these up.

Learn More: Everything You Need to Know About Dynamic Search Ads

Step 1: Click to create a new campaign in Google.

Step 2: Choose your campaign objective.

We typically choose website traffic as our objective.

Step 3: Choose conversion goals.

These are usually set up at the account level, so you shouldn’t have to change anything here. For an eCommerce business, we use calls from ads and purchases as conversions. For non-eCommerce businesses, we’ll choose goals such as contact form submissions, 2+ minutes on site, and click to call.

Step 4: Select campaign type.

You’ll want to choose a search campaign for your dynamic campaign!

Step 5: Enter your website and campaign name.

Step 6: Choose your bidding strategy.

I typically choose to focus on conversion value and return on ad spend. This is what makes the most sense for DermWarehouse (and many of our eCommerce clients). If you need more guidance on which bidding strategies to select, check out our blog on the benefits of automated bidding!

Step 7: Go through the rest of the Google ads settings.

Networks: We choose not to include Google search partners or the display network, so I would uncheck those boxes.
Locations: We typically target just the United States for our clients.
Languages: English should be auto selected.

Step 8: Click on “More Settings” and then “Dynamic Search Ads Settings.”

This is an important step, as this is where you’ll determine that your ad will be dynamic! Put your website name in the box where it asks for the website.

Step 9: Choose dynamic ad targets.

This is where the fun really begins and we start setting up our dynamic ad. You can choose to target the following:

Categories
- We rarely use this, but you can target different categories on your site.
- This would work well if you have a ton of products and want to focus on a specific product type. For example, we have a client who sells lighting. If they wanted to focus just on floor lamps, they would be able to set that as a target here.
Specific webpages
- If you don’t want to target all of the pages on your site, but just want to focus on a few key pages this is a great choice. For example, for DermWarehouse, we sell over 100 brands. If we wanted to set up an ad for our top 5 brands, we would choose this option.
- Keep in mind that if we wanted to target 95 brands but exclude 5, we could choose the next option and set certain pages as negative dynamic ad targets instead.
- For this option, you would choose to use an exact URL or create rules to target webpage.
  - For the exact URL, if you have certain product pages or services you want to target, select this.
  - To create rules to target webpage, there are several different options you can choose from. If you’re an eCommerce business selling different brands, you may choose to target URLs that contain specific strings.
    - For example, our product pages on DermWarehouse are structured like this “https://dermwarehouse.com/product/park-perfection-lash-enhancing-serum/.” If I wanted to target all Park Perfection products, I would enter in the URL “https://dermwarehouse.com/product/park-perfection”
All webpages
- Use this if you want to target your entire site.
- Note: I usually set the blog page as a negative dynamic ad target!
- For this option, you would just click on the checkbox that says “all webpages”
- Don’t forget to set any negative dynamic ad targets for any pages on your site that you want to exclude.

Step 10: Create your ad.

Dynamic ads will dynamically pull in the headlines for your ad. This is great because they will match what customers are searching for on Google so the ads will be extremely targeted and customized.

All you need to do here is write out your descriptions. The descriptions in the image below are what Google recommended that we use. If I were publishing this ad, I would make sure to utilize as many of my 90 characters as possible and make these very descriptive and unique.

Step 11: Add your extensions.

You’ll want to add sitelink, call out, call, image and any other extensions that make sense for your business. This is similar to what you would do in any other search ad.

Learn More: How to Crush It with Google PPC Sitelink Extensions