What are Ad Extensions?

Google ad extensions allow you to create more powerful PPC advertisements by providing additional information such as location, phone numbers, seller ratings or additional links to your site, all at no additional cost.  It is not a widely publicized tool, yet it can yield huge boosts to your click-through rate (CTR), it can make your advertisement more relevant and by taking up more real estate, the advertisement tends to invite more clicks versus competing advertisements.  If implemented properly, ad extensions can help lower your advertising costs while reducing bounce rates and increasing conversion rates.

Of the eight ad extensions currently offered, sitelinks may arguably provide the best opportunity for increased qualified traffic.  When activated, sitelinks allow you to create up to ten additional link URLs per advertisement, each one of which should point to a different landing page on your site. Up to six of the ten sitelink URLs could show up underneath an advertisement, on either one or two rows, with a maximum of three links per row.

How do Ad Site Links work?

Triggering two rows of sitelink URLs is not easy. To do so, Google must decide that your advertisement is the top ranking advertisement for the given query and that the keyword, the advertisement, and the landing page are all 100% relevant. On the other hand triggering only one-row of Sitelinks is not as demanding, your advertisement merely needs to be in one of the top three. In both instances, sitelinks must of course have been activated for the relevant campaign.  Getting your Sitelinks to actually show, however, is a bit more difficult.

Google utilizes several factors to determine if your advertisement qualifies for Ad Site Links and if so, which links should show.  Some of the factors include:

• Your advertisement’s Quality Score.
• Your advertisement’s position on Google SERPs.
• The content of your landing pages and the relevance of your selected sitelinks.
• Any additional ad extensions enabled in your campaign.
• The search query.
• The relevance of competing advertisements on the SERP.

Results – What to Expect

By having a larger advertisement, with up to six additional links to relevant products or services, you have a much greater chance of answering the user’s query more accurately with specific advertisement text.  If your landing pages are closely related to the advertisement text (as they should be), you should have highly engaged visitors, interested in following your sales funnel to an eventual conversion. Simultaneously your bounce rate will drop, your CTR will rise and your Cost Per Click should eventually go down.

Lastly, according to Google the following practices will help increase your chances of having your site links actually show:

•  Your sitelink URLs must lead to a unique landing page, with unique content. Sitelinks pointing to the same content will not be shown.
•  Your advertisement should show in one of the top three positions above Google search results.
•  Your advertisement needs a high Quality Score.
•  Your sitelink URLs must be relevant to the product or service you offer.
• Add the maximum amount of sitelinks you can to your campaign. Your campaign needs a minimum of two approved sitelinks in order for sitelinks to appear with your advertisements.

Sitelinks is a great gift from Google for those advertisers with excellent quality scores who already have a high PageRank. If you are already placing in the top position, imagine what your CTR will be with six additional links to your site embedded in two additional rows below your advertisement.  All for absolutely no additional charge.  It would be madness not to take advantage of it.

       
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