cdurand
[box]
When it comes to text ads, a small amount of extra screen space used can have a great impact on your paid search success. We’ve compiled a list of ways you can maximise the success of your text ads by using this space carefully and to your advantage.
Google and Bing make their money through ads, so they are incentivised to drive traffic to ads on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Google, in particular, has done this through making the ads larger. They have increased the width of their ads, and they announced longer versions of Google text ads last month that will become the norm by the fall. When you combine these changes with the huge array of ad extensions available to advertisers, it’s apparent that organic search results are getting more and more squeezed out of the space on the SERP. It’s incumbent on advertisers to maximise their own space usage by employing all applicable ad extensions on both Adwords and Bing.
[/box]
Get to know the range of Ad Extensions available and how you can use them:
1 Sitelink Extensions: blue links or extra enhanced sitelinks beneath the title so potential buyers can visit your site.
2 Extended Sitelinks: Allow advertisers to add description text to sitelinks, which often increases your CTR (Click Through Rate).
3 Call Extensions: displays your phone number so people can call your business.
4 Seller Ratings: ratings for your business that appear automatically. Make sure your company name is the same on all Google review sites so that appears correctly.
5 Callout Extensions: Descriptive text that tells people what your business does. For example, ‘free shipping’, ‘international delivery’, ‘PC and Mac’, and so on.
6 App Extensions: link to your app in the app store so users can download it.
7 Location Extensions: includes a link to your location in Google Maps, allowing people to find your business with ease.
8 Previous Visits: shows the person searching if he or she has been to the site before. (Automatic)
9 Structured Snippets: List relevant options so users can see the range of your offering – different depending on your industry vertical (e.g. Hotel locations, product categories etc.).
10 Google introduces these ad extensions because it increases the CTR average, which is a key component in quality score. This should allow for more traffic at a lower cost per click, which should get more conversions because this means more traffic, due to the CTR, with a higher intent to buy because users are better qualified.
If you would like more information on how you can maximise your ad real estate, tweet at us @ESV_Digital_UK or follow us on LinkedIn.