Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Standing Out Visually

It's crucial to stand out with your messaging, your offer, and your Unique Selling Proposition. You can also make your ad look different from other ads to attract attention through contrast.

Include the keyword

If you include the keyword in your headline, you can almost always increase your ad CTR. For example, an ad with the headline “Homebrew for Beginners” achieved a 3.88 percent CTR for the keyword [homebrew], but pulled only 1.01 percent for [home brew].

Matching the ad to the exact keyword tells your prospects that you understand them (even if you don't). Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) experts tell us that people build rapport by using the exact same words as others rather than paraphrasing. For additional visual benefit, Google bolds keywords on its results page.

Google also deems ads that include keywords as relevant to positively affect your quality score, which affects how much you pay for each click compared with other advertisers with higher or lower quality scores.

If your competitors are all using the keywords in their headlines (or, in the case of keywords of 20–25 characters, as their headlines), you'll want to choose a different strategy to stand out. In Figure 8-2, every ad includes the headline, the result of which is the “wallpaper effect”: The searcher filters out the identical elements of the ads and doesn't even consciously register them. The only headline words that stand out are Used, Website, and Superstore.

That said, most ads ...