Search ad copy

What search ad copy is

Search ad copy is the text of a paid advert that appears because somebody typed a phrase: a set of headlines, a set of descriptions, and the path text beneath them. It is written per ad group rather than per campaign, because an ad group is a small cluster of phrases that mean one thing, and the whole value of paid search is that the reader has already told you what they want.

It is not the general advertising job. Advertising copy covers search, display and social together. This page is search only, and narrower on purpose: character limits, phrase matching, and never writing one ad that has to serve four different searches. It is also not account management. I write the ads and the test plan; I do not spend your budget.

Who this is for

A business already paying for clicks, with one campaign, one ad group, and two or three ads that say something general about quality and service. Every phrase triggers the same ad, and every click lands on the home page. The cost per click is known and the cost per customer is not.

The second case is a new account, where the phrases have been chosen and nothing has been written yet. That is the cheaper moment to do this, because the ads and the page can be built to agree from the start rather than reconciled afterwards.

You do not need this if the phrase list itself is the problem. If nobody has checked what people actually type, or whether those searches want an answer rather than a supplier, start with keyword and topic research or intent research, and come back when the groups exist.

What I write

• Headlines per ad group. Enough of them for the ad platform to rotate and test, each written inside the character limit so none of them is truncated mid-word on a phone. At least one headline in every group repeats the searcher's own phrase, because that is the line they scan for.
• Descriptions per ad group. Two or three per group, each carrying the thing the headline could not fit: the service area, the callout fee, the guarantee, the opening hours.
• The match note. For each group, which phrases it is meant to catch and what a person typing them is trying to do. This is what stops the next person who edits the account from merging four groups back into one.
• Negative phrases. The searches that look right and are not: job seekers, students, and people in a city you do not serve.
• The landing page copy. Headline, opening sentence and button for the page each group points at, written at the same time as the ad.

What you get

The ad sheet. One spreadsheet, one tab per campaign, one block per ad group, with every headline and description in its own cell and a character count beside it. It can be pasted straight into the account or handed to whoever runs it.

The page copy. One document per landing page, written to make the same promise in the same words as the ads above it. I write the ad and the page together or not at all. If the page needs more than a new headline and opening, I will say so and quote conversion copy separately. For a page that should also earn unpaid visits, an SEO landing page is the version built to do both, and a page built purely for the paid click is a landing page.

A test plan. Which headlines to run against which, how long to leave them before judging, and what to do with the loser. Written in plain language for a business owner, not for a specialist.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A commercial locksmith in a mid-sized Ontario city runs one ad group of about sixty phrases and three ads that all read "Trusted locksmith, fast service, call now". The phrases include "locked out of office", "master key system cost" and "rekey after employee left". Everything lands on the home page, where the first thing a visitor sees is a photograph of a van.

The rewrite splits those phrases into five groups: emergency lockout, rekeying, master key systems, door hardware repair, and access control. Each group gets its own headlines, so the person locked out at nine in the evening sees a headline about response time and the office manager pricing a master key system sees a headline about site surveys. Three of the five groups get their own page; the two smallest share one. The negative list removes "locksmith courses" and "locksmith jobs", which were taking a steady share of the daily budget.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, where you sell it, what you are spending, and what one new customer is worth. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of ad groups, the number of pages, and the revision rounds, agreed before anything starts.
3. Access. Read-only access to the ad account, the phrase list if there is one, and the pages the ads point at. Two working days.
4. The draft. The ad sheet and the page copy together, five to seven working days after the call. You tell me what you will not promise and what you cannot staff.
5. Final copy and a handover call. One round of revisions included, then a short call with whoever will paste it into the account.

Two weeks from first call to final copy is typical for an account of this size.

What it costs

Search ad copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the size varies: five ad groups and one page is a different job from twenty groups and eight pages. Ad spend is never included and stays entirely yours. The pricing page shows the four ways of working, and the number is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Once the ads are running honestly, the next job is usually the page rather than the ad, because the click is now cheap and the booking is not; that is rewriting the page people land on. Some businesses then want the same offer carried into email and social for a fixed period, which is one idea run across every channel. Others find that the searches worth having are ones they could earn without paying, and move budget towards pages built for commercial searches. This piece of work is complete on its own. Nothing further is assumed.