Do you want more real-estate on your SERPs? Are you tired of your campaigns not performing? Do you want to generate more clicks and conversions from your ads? Ad extensions are the way forward for you!
By the end of this guide, you’ll learn everything there is to know about ad extensions and how you can use them in your ad campaigns today.
Introduction – What Are Ad Extensions?
Ad extensions are additional pieces of information which you can add to your ad campaign. This helps to expand your advertisement and make the ad more useful to users.
According to Google Ads Help – ad extensions give people “more reasons to choose your business. They typically increase an ad’s click-through rate by several percentage points.”
Reference- https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375499?hl=en-GB
Throughout this article, I will discuss 8 different ad extensions and how they will benefit you and your ad campaigns.
Call Extensions
A call extension displays the business’s number next to the URL in the ad itself. This allows the user to dial the business directly from the results page. this particular extension is useful for mobile ads as the user can just click on the number and dial the business straight away.
Call extensions are a useful extension to add to your ads for businesses which offer a service, such as plumbing, as the user can dial the plumber instantly without having to go onto the website to find the number.
Sitelink Extensions
Sitelink extensions allow the use of internal hyperlinks in your ads as well as the landing page. This helps to provide direct access to other areas of the website which the user may find useful, for example a ‘Price List’ page or a ‘Contact Us’ page. At no additional cost, a sitelink extension allows you to entice a user with deep links which lead to other web pages on your site.
Sitelinks are crucial for increasing the amount of real-estate on the results page. Essentially, adding sitelinks to your ads will present additional choices and links to your website, meaning the CTR increases as the user is more likely to visit your website when presented with more options.
Location Extensions
Location extensions help to verify a business by allowing you to add a geographical location to the ad. This is ideal for businesses which operate using a brick and mortar shop, for example a restaurant. This also allows the user to click on the location which will give them directions to your business.
Location extensions are important to include in your ad campaigns as they encourage people to visit your brick and mortar location, whether it’s a restaurant or a shop in the retail industry. As well as that, location extensions help to increase CTR, resulting in a boosted quality score and lower CPC.
Callout Extensions
Callout extensions are best for showcasing some of the USPs of a business, for example “free shipping” or “Available 24/7”. You can add four different callout extensions to your ads, each with a limit of 25 characters.
Callouts are essential for highlighting the key parts of your business which differentiate it from competitors. This helps the user to decide to choose your business over others in the industry.
Structured Snippets Extensions
Structured snippets allow you to highlight some of the attributes relating to your business, for example you could show a list of the services you provide or technical specifications of a product. This helps to give the user a better idea of the products and services which you offer before they click through to the website.
Structured snippet extensions are important for maintaining a high quality score as well as trying to increase conversion rate. This is because a user can see the services which a company provides before clicking through to the website, meaning they are more likely to purchase a product or service from the business if they visit the site. Therefore it helps to narrow traffic down to audiences who are only interested in the products and services which you offer.
Price Extensions
Price extensions allow you to feature some of your products and services on the results page along with a price. They appear as cards and have a small description along with a price and title. This helps to give the user a better idea about the products which you offer.
Price extensions also allow you to insert a direct link to the product webpage, meaning the user can click on the price extension and be directed straight the product. This helps to ease confusion as the customer will not have to struggle with navigating around a website and it will also benefit the business as they are more likely to purchase the product once clicked on. This is because you can also start to implement remarketing campaigns which targets shopping cart abandoners.
Image Extensions
Image extensions allow you to display an image next to your search ad. Rather than directly uploading an image to be used in your ads, Google will use images from your ad’s landing page which are relevant. Image ads are still in Beta but are slowly becoming available for general use on the Google Ads Interface.
According to WordStream – “In addition to enhancing your text ads with a fresh image from your landing page, image extensions can also help to improve ad quality and potentially quality score. Ads with a higher Quality Score both perform better on Google and cost less per click.”
Reference- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/12/11/google-image-extensions
App Extensions
When your main goal is to increase the amount of app installations, including an app extension in your ad campaign is crucial. App extensions allow users to install your app directly from the SERPs. However, these extensions only work when using mobile ads so it is important to make sure that you are targeting the correct devices depending on your audience. They are useful because they give the user the ability to click on your ad and be directed to the app store on their device. The user can then make the decision to either download the app or not.
Conclusion
According to Google – “Every type of ad extension that we offer is intended to benefit our users, which translates to a higher CTR for you. On average we have found that there is a 10-15% CTR uplift from implementing a new ad extension.” This clearly indicates the importance of including ad extensions in your campaigns. The use of extensions help to significantly increase a variety of measurable data types such as CTR, optimisation score, clicks and conversions.
Reference- https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167131?hl=en-GB