Get More Adwords Exposure with Sitelinks, Product Extensions

You can get get more Adwords exposure with Sitelinks and Product Extensions. In the last 12 months you may have witnessed a surge in various different search results added onto the first page of Google SERPS (search engine results pages). Search results from tweets, news, shopping, image, local business and a few other Google search platforms.

This provides the end user with more choice and more relevant search results, however it makes the results crowded, and thus makes it difficult for an individual listing, whether paid or organic to gain as much traffic as it once did.

More recently, paid search has received an increasing amount of exposure and real estate space on the search results, partially down to increasing frequency of ad placements above the #1 organic search results, but also down to adwords extensions which allows each ad slot to have more prominence in the results pages as demonstrated below.

adwords product extensions sitelinks

This creates a unique opportunity for ecommerce websites to gain prominence in search listing using the product and sitelinks adwords extensions.

Product Extensions

The products extension is displayed as a collapsed list, when clicked a gallery of products are displayed from your feeds, as demonstrated above. It’s worth experimenting with this because it costs nothing more to use, although the higher prominence of your ads may increase CTR which results in a better quality score which then may reduce bid price.

Products extension requires the use of Google Merchant account, which you will need to set up using the steps below:

  1. Set up an account on http://www.google.com/merchants using the same email address as your adwords account.
  2. Fill out all the store settings
  3. Create a data feed of your products and upload it to Google merchants, most shopping carts allow you to generate a list of your products some may refer to it using the previous name Google base.

With your merchant account set up and ready to go, you simply need to link your merchants and adwords accounts together to get product extensions to work.

  1. Select the adword campaign in which you want to use product extensions.
  2. A new tab called “Ad extensions” should now appear in campaigns, click it and tick the Google merchant account email address to activate product extensions.

A few notes on Product Extensions and Google Merchants

  • Product extensions only appear on Google search network, and at the moment only on ads place above organic search
  • There is no guarantee that extensions will appear, the requirement seems to be high quality score and enough products in your range that match the search phrase.
  • Google merchant lists your products in shopping search results, which may get you free traffic from the shopping results.
  • You have no control over which products appear, so it may be in your interest to tweak your inventory, with relevant names and pictures, to optimise for adwords extensions.

Sitelink Extensions

The sitelink extension allows you to add four additional links to your site underneath your regular adwords ad. This gives you an opportunity to get more exposure and prominence for your ads in search results. It also allows you to place alternative offers and products to entice users to visit your site.

Sitelink Extensions are relatively straight forward to create, go into your adwords campaign > ad extensions and enter the title and URL of your links.

Few tips for sitelink extensions

  • Only send visitors to relevant pages with the intent on selling, with your eye on ROI, don’t be tempted to fill up all your sitelinks just for more exposure.
  • Keep concise, sitelinks is an extension of your main ad, and not an alternative ad.
  • Use it to promote seasonal and weekly offers, such as free shipping on $100 orders, or free bonus gifts on mother’s day purchases.
  • When the adwords ad is for a specific product, it can be useful to use sitelinks to promote free add-ons main product, or a close substitute product which user may be interested in.

Conclusion

With the first page of Google search results being increasingly crowded with various different search results, it’s important to use as many tools at your disposal to increase traffic to your ecommerce website. Sitelink and product extensions for Adwords costs nothing to set up, and can help boost your campaigns and overall profitability. While product extensions is meant primarily for ecommerce websites, sitelinks can be used for various different offers such as affiliates, information products, software, services etc.

Guest author Karim is the webmaster of OnlineBackupServices.co and a SEM strategist.

Share with friends

About the Author: P Chandra is editor of QOT, one of India's earliest tech bloggers since 2004. A tech enthusiast with expertise in coding, WordPress, web tools, SEO and DIY hacks.