Sitelink Extensions

Are you using sitelink extensions to their full potential?

Sitelink extensions are a type of ad extension, and offer an easy way to help potential customers find what they’re looking for. They appear below your PPC ad, allowing you to add links to other pages on your site. You have the freedom to choose which pages you wish to promote.

Sitelink extensions are so easy to use, yet so many businesses aren’t taking full advantage of the benefits they can offer.

So why should you be using them?

Highlight Promotions

Sitelink extensions are a great way to highlight any promotions or discounts that your business is currently offering. For example, if you’re currently holding a seasonal sale, or have a ‚Äòbuy one get one free’ offer available, you can emphasise this in sitelink extensions. It’s always a good idea to create sitelink extensions in the same way you’d create your actual PPC ads. Make the copy attention-grabbing, and make sure you link to a relevant page on your site! Check out Liz Earle’s PPC ad for Mascara. They’ve used sitelink extensions to promote their ‚ÄòEssentials’ offer and their new offers. They’ve also managed to emphasise their USPs‚Ķ

Emphasise Your USPs

Do you offer free delivery? Do you offer lifetime warranty? Can your customers collect from your store? Then tell them! Using sitelink extensions to promote your biggest USPs will help you to stand out amongst competing ads. John Lewis have done this by using their sitelink extensions to highlight their ‚ÄòClick & Collect’ service, alongside their ‚ÄòNever Knowingly Undersold’ campaign. However, we think they could’ve made their sitelinks even more relevant by including more ad group level sitelink extensions‚Ķ

Ad Group Level Sitelink Extensions

Rather than relying solely on campaign level sitelink extensions, it’s important to throw in a mixture of ad group level ones too. Campaign level sitelink extensions, which link to pages on your site such as your blog are obviously still useful, and will help to grab the attention of some potential customers. However ad group level sitelink extensions can almost be used as a cross-sell or up-sell tool, where you can include links to products which may be relevant to the user’s search query. In our own PPC ads, we use ad group level sitelink extensions to promote services related to the user’s search query. Here, when a user searches ‚ÄòMagento Gold Partner’, we also show links to other Magento-related pages.

What Are the Benefits?

In layman’s terms, sitelink extensions should help you to sell more. By providing extra links to draw the attention of potential customers, not only will links to your site begin to dominate the search results page, but the click through rate on your ads will increase as consumers are provided with more relevant options to choose from. Clicks on sitelink extensions only cost the same as clicks on your PPC ads, and you can see when a click on a sitelink extension has resulted in a conversion. What have you got to lose?

Keep an eye out, as over the next few weeks we’ll be exploring some of the other types of ad extensions, such as call, location and review extensions.

By Joanna Roberts, Digital Marketing Executive at Space 48.