Because my campaign has been getting more expensive, I've made an effort to really focus on the quality of my ads rather than increasing my max bid. In the instance of one keyword, I hadn't really wanted to pay up to $1 per click. So, I kept the max bid at $.50 and worked on creating some new ads, one of them with with the auto keyword insertion thing that dynamically puts in the search phrase. Instead of a reactivation of the keyword because of increased relevance, they want me to bid up to $5 for it. ARGH!!! Am I missing something with my strategy, or are they just @#$%ing with me?
My understanding is that DKI won't in itself impact on your quality score. If it's causing you to have a better ctr then indirectly it will improve your quality score, but of itself it doesn't improve how google judge the relevance of your ad - for that they use the default keyword.
But doesn't the added relevancy improve the quality score if the keyword phrase is repeated in the ad? That's one of the reasons I was experimenting with DKI in the first place. My clickthroughs are decent, but I need to try to figure out a way to keep the conversion costs down. Anyhow, thanks to the both of you for listening to my rant
DKI actually lowers your quality score a little at least that is what I have been told on other forums. Black Pigeon - You are on the right track by improving your ads but don't forget to improve your page and try to theme your content around the keyword. This should help.
ImCanuck, I suppose I should consider reworking my strategy then. I feel the ads are decent, and the page content is very good. It might just be that the keywords are getting more competitive, but a $1-$5 jump is pretty suspicious. I don't actually need DKI from a management standpoint because I have a set of campaign subgroups set up so that I can create good ads that are relevant to the keywords included in each subgroup. The campaign is small enough that it's pretty manageable. Anyone else want to weigh in on DKI's relation to quality score? I'm starting to wonder if DKI has any use value at all.
I've done quite a lot of experimentation with DKI, and it's never made any difference at all to my QS. What does matter is the default term that you enter. I assume that you're default term was relevant? If not, this will be the cause of your problems... But if your minimum bids have been increasing gradually over time, your clickthrough rate is probably the cause. As a VERY rough guide, I look for about 2% - 3% for positions 7-10, 3% - 5% for positions 4-6 and 5% - 8% for positions 1-3. If I get these levels, then I have a Great Quality Score, if not, then it tends to be nearer OK. Those are very approximate, and it depends on your keywords - what sort of CTR are you getting on Search at the moment?