• Search Marketing Standard , Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:45 AM

Testing, competitive research and dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) are some of the tools David Rodnitsky counts as essential to the search copywriter's repertoire.

With testing, your goal should be trying to find a slightly "generic" ad text that can work across multiple, diverse ad groups. Pit two or three of these ad texts against each other, then suss out the winner and repeat with a new set of challengers. "Wash and repeat until the increase in performance becomes minimal or your ad text winner holds the top position through many ad text wars," he says.

"When first developing your ad text copy, you can save yourself a lot of time by first looking at what your competitors are doing," Rodnitsky says. "More specifically, look at what the advertisers in the top positions are using for their ad text." Then, use those terms to influence your own copy--perhaps finding value proposition keywords that they're missing, or related terms that are more appropriate for your company.

And lastly, remember to not be overly concerned with CTR, as its just one metric of ad copy performance. "Many people have been duped into thinking that the sole determinant of ad text success is click through rate (CTR)," Rodnitsky says. "While it is true that your CTR will reduce your CPC; on the search engines, sending thousands of unqualified visitors to your site will quickly deplete your budget and ruin your ROI."

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