PPC Protips – Stack Up Those Extensions

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In the world of pay per click (PPC) management, there’s a vast number of things to check on and optimize to ensure your accounts are running as efficiently as possible. For the purpose of this post, we’re going to focus on Google ad extensions.

Ad extensions are ways to increase your overall real estate on the search engine results page (SERP). They can be used to help sell a product or service, provide additional information, or identify your brand’s competitive advantage. Most importantly, these extensions provide more avenues for user engagement with your ads, leading to greater amounts of traffic and whatever your KPIs might be (revenue, registrations, app downloads, etc).

Now, let’s take a look at a few of my favorite ad extensions below:

SITELINKS

Sitelinks are wonderful. The idea behind a sitelink is to provide additional pages for the user to visit through sub-links below the main ad, all containing their own relevant messaging. It’s no doubt that Sitelinks are an effective addition to your paid ads, as Google estimates your click-through rate (CTR) to increase 10-20% (or 20-50% on branded terms). Example outlined in red below:

CALLOUTS + STRUCTURED SNIPPETS

Callouts and structured snippets are actually two different extensions, but look fairly similar. Both can be set at the account level if applicable, so they can be managed with ease in order to add or take down at a moment’s notice. Callouts have long been used to highlight promotions, exclusive offers, or limited edition products to consumers. Structured snippets on the other hand, are a newer form of extension primarily used to showcase your exclusive brand styles, features, or product families. Example outlined below: (red for callouts, blue for snippets)

REVIEWS

Another easy extension to add and manage, reviews allow you to take a quote from a credible review source and highlight it below the ad. The review extension also serves the purpose of linking directly to the site from where the review originated, thus adding additional merit to your brand, product, or service. Example outlined below:

LOCATIONS

Last but not least, if you have a physical location and want to increase foot traffic, make sure to enable the location extensions. A little more setup is involved with these, especially if you have a large number of locations to deal with. However, adding these locations will ensure that potential customers have a way to easily find and access the nearest store.

These are just a few of the many extensions worth looking into. Also check out call extensions and app extensions for an even greater tailored ad experience.

Again, one of the best reasons to use ad extensions is that you’re able to maximize your real estate on the SERP page. This means less room for your competition, especially on branded terms. Try stacking as many relevant extensions across your PPC campaigns as possible, and check out the results. Google of course won’t always show all of the extensions at once, instead they’ll pick and choose using a fun little algorithm consisting of ad rank, quality score, and a few other factors.

Enjoy!

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