Okay, so if you’re a SEM, you already know about sitelinks. But if you aren’t, or you aren’t sure how to set them up, this article will get you there.

Sitelinks

Adding sitelinks (under ad extensions) to a campaign or multiple campaigns is relatively easy and can be a very effective advertising tool. Sitelinks are descriptive phrases that link to specific pages within your website (other than the main landing page). They are displayed beneath your text ad in Google search results. See below.

These links let a user see more information about your website before clicking on your ad. It makes sense that this would increase CTR because your ad will display more options to entice the user. Furthermore, the user will recognize a sitelink as a potential shortcut to what they are searching for. This, in theory, should also increase conversion rates as the user is more informed before they click on the ad.

How To Get Sitelinks Up and Running

1) In your adwords account, choose a campaign you want to add the sitelinks to, and click on it in the left sidebar.

2) Then select the “Ad extensions” tab, and just underneath that to the left select “Sitelinks Extensions” from the drop down arrow. See below.

3) Click on the “New extension” button

4 ) Now a green box will pop up. Click on the “Select Extension” button.

5) This will open a drop down menu where you will click on “+ Create new extension”

6) Now a box will open with two fields for you to enter:  a) the text that you want to appear under your add, and  b) the corresponding web page you want the text to link to.

7) Add up to 6 sitelinks, the most important first. Then save them, and you’re done!

Keep in mind that it may take 12 hours or so before the sitelinks begin showing under your ads. Also, the sitelinks will not show if your ad is not in one of the top spots on the SERP. Lastly, not all 6 sitelinks are guaranteed to show. It may only be 3 or 4. Like anything else in this brave new world, it’s all up to Google.

Real World Example

Our experience with sitelinks has definitely been positive. While reviewing one of our accounts recently I decided to analyze some data and compare CTR’s of ads shown without sitelinks to those same ads shown with sitelinks.  Keep in mind these ads are exactly the same otherwise.  (Your ads will sometimes run without showing sitelinks – even if you are in the top positions)

I examined 3 different campaigns for this particular account. I found that the ads that were triggered with sitelinks had (on average) a 3.12% higher CTR than the same ads showing without sitelinks for the same date range. That’s a pretty significant difference considering the average CTR’s for those campaigns averaged out at 8.16%. At first I thought maybe this was affected by average ad position, but the avg. positions for both sets of ads were very similar… all between 1.2 and 2.5.

This particular client has an e-commerce operation, but I think sitelinks can benefit all types of businesses. We have experienced success with sitelinks across all of our accounts.

So if you haven’t tried them yet, I hope you will. Feel free to let us know how it goes!