One of the most underutilized weapons in a number of AdWords accounts is ad extensions. Ad extensions allow you to take up more real estate on the SERP, providing additional links to your site, product images and other information that can draw people in and increase your click-through rates. In this guide, we’ll be walking through each of the AdWords ad extensions in detail, showing you how they work, when they work, and why you’d want to leverage them.
In this post I will provide a brief overview of each. Click the headings on each section for an in-depth look at each of the AdWords ad extensions. (You might want to go ahead and bookmark this guide now...)
Google AdWords Location Extensions [6]
AdWords location extensions [6] show in response to certain local queries, and the data shown to searchers in these instances is based on what the advertiser decides to show; you can either have this data pull from an associated Google Places account, or you can input the data by hand. We’ll walk through some of the specific applications of location extensions, as well as the nuts and bolts of how to use them within your account in the next post in this series.
Google AdWords Product Extensions [7]
Product extensions [7] aren’t universally applicable as many lead gen advertisers won’t necessarily be able to make use of the feature, but for advertisers who have a Google Merchant Center account it can be an invaluable way to grab hold of additional real estate and get extra exposure for your ad in the SERPs.
Google AdWords Ad Sitelinks [8]
Not unlike Google’s traditional sitelinks, ad sitelinks [8] offer a series of additional opportunities to link to deeper content on your site. In the ad sitelinks installment of the series, we’ll cover how to set these up and also how to select the most effective sitelinks for your campaigns.
Google AdWords Call Extensions [9]
AdWords call extensions [9] offer another opportunity to incorporate an additional dimension in your ad. The feature is particularly interesting (and potentially powerful) if you’re attempting to drive mobile traffic and conversions via your AdWords campaign.
Google AdWords Communication Extensions [10]
AdWords communication extensions [10] allow advertisers to collect lead information directly from the SERP, without the searcher having to click through to a landing page. This feature is currently in beta.
Additional AdWords Ad Extension Tutorials
Can’t wait for the guide? Our friends at Koozai Digital Marketing recently launched a great four-part overview of ad extensions themselves:
Ours will take a slightly different approach and hopefully have some value-add, but either way this one is well worth checking out, and the folks at both PPC Hero and Search Engine Land have put together some great content on the subject as well:
Stay tuned!
About the Author
Tom Demers [17] is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM [18], a boutique search marketing agency offering SEM services [19] including pay-per-click account management, SEO audits [20], content marketing services [21], and a variety of link building services [22] such as guest post placement packages [23] and blog strategy [24].
You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help [25] or get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com or by following him on Twitter [26].
