Combining Ad Extensions For Optimal PPC Ads

A few years back, ad copy testing was all about optimizing your titles, description lines 1 and 2, and display URLs. If you were really savvy, you’d take things to the next level and write granular, custom ads for your account of tightly-themed ad groups. Today, however, ad copy testing has evolved. You still need to do all of the great stuff just mentioned, but now there’s a new dimension of complexity: ad extensions. Some of my personal favorite ad extensions: phone extensions, social extensions, and sitelinks.

Take a look at the awesome Nextag ad to the right. This ad appears when I search for their trademark, “Nextag”. I’m quite impressed to see three ad extensions showing up: sitelinks (six of them), seller/store ratings, and social extensions. The really key point here is all of the ad extensions are incremental. They do not cannibalize each other, but show up in parallel. This is what I call the “combined effect” of ad extensions and why they’re so critical to anyone’s paid search program. The more extensions you combine, the more presence you will have on the search results page. The net effect: higher click-through-rates, more traffic, and ultimately lower cost-per-clicks (since Google and Bing Ads reward those with high CTRs via lower CPCs). In 2012, ad copy testing involves all of the fundamentals but also a focus on combining multiple ad extensions for truly rich ad units.

Image © Google.com and Nextag

Capture Email Addresses With Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 27 7

I’m a huge fan of Google AdWords ad extensions. What are ad extensions? They are new ways of customizing your AdWords ads to greatly improve your overall CTR and interaction with searchers. Basically, Google is challenging the traditional paid search ad format with new, special extensions that make your ads more interesting and interactive than ever before. Different ad extensions make sense in different verticals. Some of my favorite examples from the finance vertical include Call Extensions and Sitelinks. In the retail vertical, you may quite familiar with seller review extensions.

Recently, I noticed another cool ad extension that’s still in beta testing, email lead capture extensions (check out the screenshot below). For many verticals, the money truly is in the email list. This is never more true than in the “daily deals” vertical. When I search for “sf deals”, I found a neat ad by Pinchit that allows me to sign up for their email deals without ever leaving Google AdWords! If you make a lot of money from your email list, I highly recommend asking your AdWords rep about this extension. If you’re in a vertical that is not as reliant on your email list, I highly recommend testing the other extensions, you will not be disappointed. Great work Google, please keep the cool ad extensions coming.

Google Now Displaying Six Sitelinks In Paid Search

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 5 5

Google AdWords is evolving! More front end, user facing enhancements have occurred in the last year than I can remember in my 7+ years of paid search. This is really fun for me because I’m obsessed with PPC and also because the front end is all about marketing at its best. The tools now available, via Google ad extensions, empower us more than ever to deliver amazing ad experiences to the end user.

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you probably know I’m a huge fan of sitelinks. Out of all the Google AdWords ad extensions, sitelinks are by far my favorite. Today, I’m excited to share a neat screenshot (below) that shows State Farm’s brand ad with six sitelinks! That’s right, if your CTR is high enough, Google now appears to be delivering six sitelinks. Also, I’m pleased to share some of my favorite sitelinks tips and strategies.

PPC Ian’s Top 4 Sitelinks Tips

Now, this is cool for State Farm, but you may be wondering what does this mean for you? Good question! First and foremost, make sure to make sure all your campaigns (especially the ones that house your brand name terms) have six sitelinks. If you don’t have six sitelinks, it’s impossible for six to show up. Side note: I noticed one advertiser recently who only had three sitelinks (two on the first line and one on the second). I think it’s because they only had three in their campaign, how embarrassing. I never advise having fewer than four sitelinks. If your worried about which ones Google will pick, don’t be. If you include six sitelinks, but only two or four show, Google will pick the ones that optimize your CTR (to the best of my knowledge).

Second, I highly recommend longer sitelinks. If you have longer sitelinks, they’re likely to occupy multiple lines like State Farm’s. However, let’s say you have shorter sitelinks. Then, they’re likely to display side-by-side and occupy fewer lines (less real estate).

Third, I recommend sending your sitelinks to different landing pages. The original intent of sitelinks is bringing your site’s navigation closer to the user. Now, you could send all of them to the same landing page, however this is not an ideal user experience and could lower your conversion rate.

Last, I recommend including calls to action in your sitelinks. State Farm does not do this, although I cannot fault them because they appear to be doing quite well. That said, there is always room for improvement when it comes to pay per click. If State Farm included words like “compare”, “find”, “get”, “apply”, etc. in their sitelinks, they are likely to improve CTR and conversion rate too (in my opinion).