how to add sitelinks to your ads in google adwords and how it can increase the ctr

Google Adwords is an internet marketing tool that lets you create ads that can then be matched against user queries and displayed on the search pages. The text ads contains just one link along with a header and description and a click on the ad takes the user to the specified link which is called the landing page. You can enhance these ads by what are called Sitelinks.

Ad Sitelinks are the additional links to other landing pages that can be specified in a Google Ad in addition to the default landing page. These additional links can point to more specific and relevant content on your site. These additional links provide users the ability to choose from multiple links, rather than you having to send all traffic to the same landing page.

It can be a very powerful search optimization technique when used correctly. Google Ads can display up to six additional sitelinks in your ads. These additional links are shown directly below your ad and can point to other relevant pages, such as an about page or a photo page with in your website.

Why Use Sitelinks

There are several advantages to specifying additional sitelinks.

Visibility: This can lead to increased visibility of various pages on your website. You can directly link the popular sections on your website to the ad. This can also be direct links to pages which converts better than other pages. These links then can provide better exposure to those pages.

High CTR: Sitelinks provides you with the ability to have more links per ad. It also means you get more characters and lines to convey your message. When used correctly, this also allow you to match against more keywords and its variations. All of these can mean only one thing: a higher Click-thru Rate (CTR) for your ads.

Quality Score: The sitelinks itself does not directly affect the quality score. But when used well, it can dramatically improve the CTR and thus can improve the quality score.

When are Sitelinks Displayed

Sitelinks are created independent of the ads, which means they are displayed depending on several other factors. One of the major factors is that your keyword have a high quality score. Your ad should be highly relevant to the query or the search keywords, and should be one of the best results.

Even for the best ads, it is not a guarantee that all the sitelinks will be displayed. Basically, this means that you have no control over when these sitelinks will be displayed. You are just providing Adwords with additional information so that it can be displayed when it is deemed appropriate and relevant.

How to Add and Edit Sitelinks

Sitelinks are created separately from the ad itself. They are linked to Campaigns or Ad Groups in your account. These are then appended to the ads when it is relevant.

  1. Go to your Google Adwords Account
  2. Choose and Select a Campaign or Ad Group in the left hand side menu. This campaign should be enabled for Search Network.
  3. Select Ad Extension tab in the center pane.
  4. In the View drop-down menu, Select the Sitelinks Extensions option
    1. The first table or section will show the statistics for the existing sitelinks
    2. The second section displays the list of existing sitelinks
  5. Click on Extension button to create or edit sitelinks, This is the red button, just above the second section on the page. This will open the sitelink editor.
  6. To create a new sitelink, click on the New Sitelink button. This will open a popup window where you can enter your sitelink details. The details are similar to creating an ad, expect that the character counts are smaller.
  7. Click on the >> button next each of the sitelink to enable it for the current campaign or ad group.
  8. Click Save to commit or save your changes

Sitelinks only make sense for text ads. In the case of other ads formats, such image, rich media or flash the ads are harder to be modified at display. It is also best to specify descriptions, even though they are optional.

Sitelinks in Adwords

The exact links and pages that you want to display as sitelinks will depend very much on your website and your Campaign keywords that your ads are showing for. If you are unsure about which pages should be in sitelinks, then you can checkout other ads in your niche or ads by your competitors to get some ideas.