May 16, 2016

Optimize your Dynamic Search Ads with Schema.org mark-up

Dynamic Search Ads (or DSAs) is a powerful tool that helps you scale and boost your PPC account, when things become sluggish. They ‘re mainly and best used when promoting products via paid search, and more specific on Google Shopping.

The benefits of Dynamic Search Ads

According to Google, DSAs help performance marketers to:

  • Save time: not having to create, test, optimize ad copies and match them with keywords and products anymore.
  • Control their campaigns: marketers can use DSAs on specific parts of the website only (e.g. product listing pages)
  • Bring more traffic: there’s no keyword targetting, but the ads are triggered according to the content (extra beneficial on content-rich websites)
  • Show relevant ads

The problems of Dynamic Search Ads

The most common problem with DSAs that most marketers have is the relevancy of the ads according to their content. Many people across the world report repeatedly that their DSAs keep showing irrelevant ad copies to their content.

The problems occurs when Google can’t parse accurately the information from the source code of the website. Usually, because the website is not following Google’s quality guidelines – aka isn’t optimized properly for search engines.

Using Schema.org to boost DSA performance

There’s a simple solution to that problem that seems to work pretty smoothly, at least in English that I tested it. The utilization of some Schema.org microdata on the website (especially on Product pages) works effortless. There are two mark-ups needed to make this work.

First one, is the usage of BreadcrumbList schema. This will facilitate Google to understand and split the website into categories and levels, and hence the marketer has more control on Dynamic Ad Targets. Example:

<ol itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList">
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope
      itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a itemprop="item" href="https://example.com/dresses">
    <span itemprop="name">Dresses</span></a>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="1" />
  </li>
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope
      itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a itemprop="item" href="https://example.com/dresses/real">
    <span itemprop="name">Real Dresses</span></a>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="2" />
  </li>
</ol>

Second and equally important mark-up that is needed, is the Product Schema. Very useful when people look for products including their brand or pricing-related words. Example:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
  <span itemprop="name">Kenmore White 17" Microwave</span>
  <img src="kenmore-microwave-17in.jpg" alt='Kenmore 17" Microwave' />
  <div itemprop="aggregateRating"
    itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
   Rated <span itemprop="ratingValue">3.5</span>/5
   based on <span itemprop="reviewCount">11</span> customer reviews
  </div>
  <div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">
    <!--price is 1000, a number, with locale-specific thousands separator
    and decimal mark, and the $ character is marked up with the
    machine-readable code "USD" -->
    <span itemprop="priceCurrency" content="USD">

lt;/span><span
itemprop="price" content="1000.00">1,000.00</span>
<link itemprop="availability" href="http://schema.org/InStock" />In stock
</div>
Product description:
<span itemprop="description">0.7 cubic feet countertop microwave.
Has six preset cooking categories and convenience features like
Add-A-Minute and Child Lock.</span>
Customer reviews:
<div itemprop="review" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">
<span itemprop="name">Not a happy camper</span> -
by <span itemprop="author">Ellie</span>,
<meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2011-04-01">April 1, 2011
<div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
<meta itemprop="worstRating" content = "1">
<span itemprop="ratingValue">1</span>/
<span itemprop="bestRating">5</span>stars
</div>
<span itemprop="description">The lamp burned out and now I have to replace
it. </span>
</div>
<div itemprop="review" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">
<span itemprop="name">Value purchase</span> -
by <span itemprop="author">Lucas</span>,
<meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2011-03-25">March 25, 2011
<div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
<meta itemprop="worstRating" content = "1"/>
<span itemprop="ratingValue">4</span>/
<span itemprop="bestRating">5</span>stars
</div>
<span itemprop="description">Great microwave for the price. It is small and
fits in my apartment.</span>
</div>
...
</div>
With these simple two additions on your source code, you can make sure that your Dynamic Search Ads are optimized according to your website’s content. Plus, you can get the additional CTR benefits on organic results too

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