Getting As Much Out Of RSA As Possible

Responsive search ads (RSA) aren’t a new feature in Google Ads—they’ve been available to most users in a beta version for more than a year. Google itself recommends that each ad group contains two ETA and one RSA. If set correctly, this type of ads can bring results which are much more interesting than those produced by ETA. Therefore, we’ve decided to summarize our experience with creating RSA and include a couple of tips on how to get as much out of them as possible.

 

First, let’s take a look at what RSA look like and what they consist of. When compared to ETA, there are several differences.

 

RSA can contain up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. You can pin these to different positions—headlines to the first, second, and third position; descriptions to the first or second position. Google then tests all potential combinations with users to find out which version brings the best results.

 

However, this means that the number of variations can be huge, and thus it’s pretty difficult to evaluate them. So how do you get RSA under control and make them work for you?

 

This piece of advice may seem rather basic but it’s very important. By pinning headlines and descriptions, you’re telling the system what must be where and what you don’t want to experiment with. So, if you already know that you want the second headline to say e.g. Price as Low as 1500 CZK, just pin the headline and the system will always display it second. Regarding the first position, it’s good to pin a headline with the name of a product, especially when it comes to product campaigns. Ideally, you should let Google test the third headline to find out which variation elicits the best response.

 

When creating RSA, you should really pay attention to the wording of headlines and descriptions. It’s important to make sure that the same thing isn’t repeated in multiple headlines/descriptions. For example, two headlines that include price but are worded a bit differently (Price as Low as 150 CZK vs. Now for 150 CZK) aren’t exactly ideal.

 

You should also take into consideration that headlines and descriptions can be combined in many ways. Therefore, each headline and description should be unique and their content shouldn’t repeat itself.

 

Generally speaking, it’s recommended to add as many headlines and descriptions to RSA as you can. In PPC Bee, we concluded that it’d be better not to turn RSA into a so-called blackbox, and decided to approach the whole thing from a different angle. That’s why there’s a special assistant to guide you through the creation of RSA and show you the total amount of variations generated by each RSA. If the number is high, the assistant recommends you to pin headlines and descriptions to reduce the volume of different versions into something that can be handled by reporting.

 

RSA are a great opportunity to quickly and easily test different text variations. Moreover, if you follow the tips we gave you above, success is guaranteed and you can look forward to seeing the performance of your campaigns skyrocket. Let’s start creating RSA, then!