14th November 2023
With paid ads there are often opportunities for including additional information to make sure you get the most out of your (paid) click. Sitelinks can help direct your customers straight to the most relevant landing page without relying on additional ads.
Sitelinks are ad extensions (now called “Assets” in Google Ads) that allow advertisers to promote up to four more specific links within one paid ad. Available in both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads (among others) these links should be more relevant to the user’s search intent like a blog post, product page, the homepage, or another pay per click landing page. Sitelinks appear beneath the text of your ads, helping your potential customers find what they’re looking for on your site with just one click.
So why should you use Sitelinks in the first place? While they are additions to your paid ads, surely you always want your visitors to click directly on the ad itself instead of a Sitelink? That is not always the case! Here are 5 benefits of using Sitelinks in your paid ads.
Sitelinks allow you to display additional links to your website directly in your ad, increasing the visibility of your brand and the likelihood that users will click through to your site. These links can help your audience see all that you have to offer.
Sitelinks can appear alongside your regular paid ads, as additional links.
For example, if promoting a paid ad that points to your shop page, you could include sitelinks that promote specific product categories. If a potential customer is looking for a specific kind of product, such a sitelink would be much more effective at directing them to the right page of your website.
This is also an effective way to display additional offerings to your target audience, who may not yet know what you offer and help bring in new visitors to your website.
By providing your audience with more options to explore your website, sitelinks can help improve your ad’s click-through rate (CTR) and drive more traffic to your site. Similar to the example mentioned above, providing links directly to what your audience is looking for increases the chance that they’ll click through to your website.
A paid ad using sitelinks will also tend to look more “professional” than regular ads (depending on the structure your advertising platform uses) by appearing more detailed. This can help increase trustworthiness and encourage engagement to click through to your website.
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Sitelinks can help improve the user experience by providing users with more relevant and useful information about your brand, products, or services. Many paid ads platforms will allow sitelinks to include a short description to provide context to your audience. These can be used to convince a potential customer to visit your website by nudging them to click, or provide additional information that they may be interested in.
Some examples of sitelinks for common pages that enhance user experience in this way could be:
These are just a few examples, but alongside a paid ad, they can help improve the user experience by providing relevant options for them to click on. They may be on the fence about purchasing and have questions, or may just wish to contact your business directly without needing to browse your main service pages.
Conversion rate is an important metric for paid ads and the importance of conversions is something we’ve talked about a few times before.
By providing users with more options to explore relevant areas of your website, sitelinks can help increase conversions by making it easier for users to find what they’re looking for and take action on your site.
An additional benefit of using sitelinks is that, if shown by the advertising platform, they’ll cause your paid to take up significantly more ad space than a regular, standalone ad. This can help your ads dominate a search results page and crowd out similar paid ads from your competitors, simply by increasing the presence of your own advertising, which can indirectly increase your conversion rate.
Sitelinks can help improve the relevance of your ads by providing users with additional options related to the main ad content, promoting engagement. For example, our own paid ads may promote our Google Analytics Setup Service, but also include sitelinks to other relevant service pages, such as A/B testing or Heat Mapping. By including these sitelinks it makes it easier for potential customers to find what they are looking for when they begin their search.
Sitelinks can greatly expand your paid ads and include relevant links to other services or information.
Along with this many paid advertising platforms will use ad relevance as a metric when determining auction time costs. A paid ad that is more relevant to an audience will generally be perceived as more effective by the platform. Adding sitelinks to your campaigns is a quick and easy way to improve the performance of your paid ads in this way.
Overall, sitelinks are a powerful tool for improving the performance of your paid ads. By providing users with more options to explore your website within a single ad, they can learn about your brand and what other services you offer as a whole. By presenting your audience with more than a single option, you can enhance their user experience and make the most of your cost per click.
If you need help with running your own paid ads, or are looking to get started, why not check out our PPC Management Service and get in touch with us today!