As PPC advertisers we always strive to increase the clickthrough rates (CTR) of our ads. Higher CTRs lead to better Quality Scores (QS). And the higher the QS, the less you have to pay per click. That's why there's always a lot of ad copy testing going on in every campaign.
We all want our CTRs to float as high as possible. And you know what? Google wants that as well because the more people click on our ads the more money they earn. So Google is constantly developing new features and tools to help us improve the performance of our campaigns. One of their recent offerings in this area is Ad Sitelinks.
What Are Ad Sitelinks
Ad sitelinks are similar to the ones that you see in organic search results. These are additional links to deeper pages of a site that appear below the main listing.
The difference here is that you can customize your AdWords sitelinks choosing the anchor texts and target URLs. Sitelinks are displayed in one or two line format and they usually appear for top ranked ads with a high QS.
Google introduced sitelinks for AdWords ads back in November as part of their Ad Extensions program. First they were only offered to a small group of top advertisers. Now sitelinks are available in every AdWords account.
Early results showed that advertisers who used sitelinks managed to boost their CTRs by 30% on average. Fancy your CTR jump up by a third? Then let's see how you can set up and use sitelinks to improve your campaign performance.
How to set up Ad Sitelinks
Setting up sitelinks is very easy. Here's how you do it.
1. If you don't already have an active 'Ad extensions' tab in your account you need to add it to your workspace. To do this select 'Ad extensions' in the 'Show tabs' dropdown and click 'OK' to add it to your tabs list.
You'll see 'Ad extension' tab appear at the end of our tab list. Your ad sitelinks are managed in that tab, so click through and proceed to the next step.
2. Switch over to the 'Sitelink Extensions' view
3. Click 'New extensions' to create a new set of links.
You can specify up to 10 sitelinks though only 4 will show with your ad. Sitelinks are set up per campaign and at the moment you can only create one set for each of your campaigns. It would be a good idea for Google to allow more sitelink sets per campaign so that advertisers can test different variations and choose the best performing ones. But at the moment you can only run one set of sitelinks, though you can edit it anytime.
Benefits of Using Sitelinks
There are a number of reasons why you should consider adding sitelinks to your campaigns.
- Higher visibility
Just like their organic counterparts AdWords sitelinks increase the visibility of your listing on the page. Ads with sitelinks stand out. They catch the eye and are more likely to generate the click.
- Increased landing page relevancy
Sitelinks give the searchers the ability to choose the landing page that's most relevant for them. This way visitors can quickly get to the information they need which is sure to benefit your conversions.
- Visitor segmentation
If you’re bidding on branded or generic keywords most likely you're sending that traffic to your homepage. It's often hard to determine what exactly the searcher is looking for when searching for broad terms. If you have several business areas adding sitelinks will help you streamline the visitors to the right product or service line.
- Special offers launchpad
Sitelinks are a great way to market all types of special offers, time-limited discounts and seasonal sales.
Measuring Results
Though CTR is an important dimension you should also keep an eye on other core metrics of your PPC campaigns. Getting more clicks is a good thing as long as these clicks drive quality traffic. You don't want to drive untargeted traffic to site and pay for these unwanted clicks however high your CTR goes. That's why you need to monitor the bounce rates; time spent on site and, of course your conversion rates. This way you'll be able to evaluate the effect of sitelinks on your campaign and decide whether you want to continue using them.