I’ve found many times that using a keyword insert in a pay-per-click ad can result in a higher click through rate, but other times they perform just as bad or worse then those without. Fortunately there are a few things you can do to help the odds of your ad performing well.

My biggest advice for using a keyword insert is to carefully examine all your keywords and ads before activating your campaign. You need to be 100% positive that all your keywords fit well into your ads and that there are no instances where the ad won’t make sense. If users are confused by an ad then odds are they won’t click on it.

You also want to make sure to check if your keywords are being displayed in upper or lower case. Different search engines have different keyword insert codes so you will need to check with the rules of the search engine you are using. My final suggestion is to only include keyword inserts in your ad’s title or display URL. In my experience putting them into the description fields will only result in low CTRs.