What Are Google Sitelink Assets & Why Should You Use Them?
Digital marketing is quite competitive and if you want to get high-quality leads, sales, and conversions, you will have to use everything in your arsenal. The same is the case with Google Ads, if you don’t make the most of all the available assets, you won’t stand a chance against your competitors. We know how it feels logging in to your account daily only to find little to no improvement in the performance and wonder what it is that you are not doing right and what needs to be done next.
There could be several reasons why the performance of your Google Ads account is not up to the mark. Not making the most of Google Ads extensions (now rebranded as assets) can be one of the reasons why the performance of your account is declining. This post will give you a brief overview of Google Ads extensions, especially the sitelinks, and how you can write convincing sitelink extensions within the character limit.
What are Google Ads Extensions (Assets)?
Extensions, as you can guess from the name itself, are the assets that expand your ads so that your ad occupies more space on search engine result pages and help make things clearer to your potential customers. They are a great way to add details you could not include in the ad copy because of the character limit or any other reason. As your ad occupies more space on the SERPs, the chances of visitors landing on your website increase. Google Ads allows you to use the following extensions/assets in your account:
- Image
- Sitelink
- Callout
- Structured snippet
- Call
- Lead form
- Location
- Affiliate location
- Price
- App
- Promotion
What are Sitelink Extensions?
Sitelink assets allow potential leads and customers to visit any specific page of your website. Here, users have the option to choose where they’d like to go apart from your landing page. Appearing just below your ad, sitelinks expand the ad’s length and your ad occupies more space (also known as real estate) on the search engine result page. Common pages used for sitelink extensions include contact us, about us, pricing, services, products, discounts and offers, testimonial pages, etc. Moreover, they are a great option for e-commerce stores to direct visitors to specific product and category pages. As they make it easy for users to find different pages on your website, you also have an opportunity to improve your CTR.
Manual and Dynamic Sitelink Extensions
You can either add sitelinks to your account manually or dynamically. Dynamic sitelink assets will show automatically and users will be directly connected from your ad to any page of your website. An advantage of dynamic sitelink extensions is that you don’t have to write the sitelink text and descriptions yourself but Google will provide descriptions automatically and they will link your ads to specific sections of your website.
Writing Sitelink Text and Descriptions
There is a character limit for sitelink descriptions just like there is for headlines and descriptions of an ad copy. When it comes to a sitelink text, you are allowed to use up to 25 characters while you can add up to 35 characters in a sitelink description. Keeping the sitelink text short is important as it will make room for more links. Most advertisers skip sitelink descriptions mainly because they don’t have the time or they just don’t want to write them. However, including descriptions for your sitelink text is important. Descriptions provide more information to users about your sitelink text and make things clearer for them. Make sure to include only the most relevant details as you will be limited by characters.
Why Are Sitelink Assets Important?
Apart from occupying more space on the search engine result pages, there are several benefits of including sitelinks in your ads:
Improve your Click-Through Rate (CTR)
With sitelinks, you can offer more opportunities for your users to interact with your website and explore different pages, products or services, offers, promotions, etc. This way they will get to learn more about your company. Sometimes, users are looking for a specific service or product, and finding what they are searching for through a sitelink can make things easier for them. This increases the number of clicks on your website and simultaneously the click-through rate (CTR). You can increase the CTR by about 10-20% after adding sitelink extensions.
More real estate on the search results engine page
Sitelinks help you occupy more space on the search engine result page as we mentioned before but many people don’t make the most of this opportunity because either they are not aware of this option or they don’t have the time to create them and write their descriptions. Whatever may be the case, it is always great to add sitelinks as your ad will occupy more space (real estate) on the SERP without costing you additional money. Not only that but utilizing sitelinks will also make your ad look more professional and catchy.
Enhance your Quality Score
Google rates the quality as well as the relevance of your keywords and paid ads. This rating is called Quality Score. Quality Score plays an important part in the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns. Furthermore, a high Quality Score means that your ad fulfills the needs of your potential leads and customers. This will make Google charge you less for the clicks on your ads. Several factors increase your Quality Score and Click-through rate (CTR) is one of the most important elements that determine your Quality Score. Since sitelinks increase your CTR, this eventually means an increase in the overall Quality Score. WhiteGlove PPC can help you generate more leads and sales by utilizing all Google Ads assets - sitelinks, callouts, call extensions, etc. Get in touch with us today!