There are many benefits for using ad extensions on Google AdWords. The first reason is that the more ad extensions you have the more real estate you will take up on Google’s search results page. 

This will help catch the eye of a potential customer which will then lead to a click on your ad and hopefully a conversion. 

The second reason you will want to add extensions is they help give the searcher more information about the goods/services your company sells. While some extensions are only a word or two, you can get a limit more descriptive with others; such as sitelinks. 

The last reason you should be using ad extensions to your Google ads is they increase the CTR (click-through-rate). Ad extensions usually increase the CTR by several percentage points. If you are an advertiser you want people to click your ads and come to your website, so take up space, fully explaining your products/service, and getting people to click your ads are a huge plus. Another great feature about ad extensions is that they are free to use, you will just pay for a single ad.

Take Full Advantage Of The Ad Extensions

There are many ad extensions available on AdWords including sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call extensions, message extensions, location extensions, affiliate location extensions, price extensions, app extensions, review extensions*, automated extensions, and promotion extensions. 

Although there are many to choose from in this post I will only be talking about the ad extensions that I currently use and see the best results from. If you have an app, I strongly encourage you to use the “app extensions” to hopefully increase your app downloads (I have never used that extension).

Sitelinks

Sitelinks are one of the oldest ad extensions on Google, but also one of the best. Sitelinks allow you to link to other parts of your website in a single ad. For example let’s say we were bidding on the keyword “party supplies”, we can have the main ad link to our homepage while in the sitelinks we can have one link go to the boys party supplies page, another link to the girls party supplies page, another page linking to theme party supplies (cartoons, movie characters, superheroes, etc), and the other link to a solid color party supplies page (blue, green, pink, etc). 

Sitelinks are clickable and are blue when they appear on Google, so they really catch your eye and entice people to click. Whatever product or service you sell, just make sure your sitelinks are relevant; I also recommend one of your sitelinks sends the potential customer to the “contact us” page if your website has one.

 You can have up to 6 sitelinks on an ad, but more often than not only 2–4 sitelinks will show at a time. Another unique feature about sitelinks is you can add descriptions to each sitelink. Just like the description line in your main ad, each sitelinks has an 80 character description line where you can explain your product/service.

Callouts

Callouts are another one of the older ad extensions, yet still very important. Callouts are exactly as they sound, short 1 to 4 words that “call out” why the end user should use your company over the competition. 

You can have up to 6 callouts on a single ad, but usually you will see about 5 per ad on Google’s search results. Callouts are a great way for you to mention a few of your best features such as, “free quotes, free shipping, years of service, quality products, competitive prices, friendly service” just to name a few. Callouts are not clickable, but they really help you get your message across and help showcase your top benefits to a potential prospect.

Structured Snippets

Structured snippets have been around since 2015, but are still heavily underutilized by many advertisers. These extensions are great to highlight your top products/services in a snapshot. You can highlight up to 10 products or services per ad, which will give a potential customer a full look at your business. Each structured snippet consists of a header and then up to ten products/services. Below is a list of the header’s:

· Amenities

· Brands

· Courses

· Degree programs

· Destinations

· Featured hotels

· Insurance coverage

· Models

· Neighborhoods

· Service catalog

· Shows

· Styles

· Types

What’s unique about this extension is that you are allowed to use more than one per ad. For instance you can use “Types” to highlight a list of products you offer and then use “Brands” to highlight the brands that they can chose from. These extensions are not clickable but they are great to get the message across of what items you sell.

Call Extensions

Call extensions are one of my favorite extensions of them all. No surprises here, call extensions allow you to showcase your company’s phone number on your ad. You can even set up a conversion goal called “calls from ads” to track how many people clicked this extension and called your business. 

This extension is clickable only on mobile devices, but they can also be displayed on computers but you just won’t be able to click on it. I have seen very strong results from this ad extension across every account I have ever managed. I can’t emphasis enough how important this extension is, do me a favor right now and add this to your account if you haven’t done so already.

Price Extensions

Price extensions are similar to sitelinks; however, they highlight the price of a particular product/service. Each price extension leads to a different landing page and you can highlight the prices of certain services or items you sell. These extensions are clickable and are also blue in color so they definitely draw a lot of eyeballs to them. 

You can have up to 6 price extensions. From personal experience if you were selling “Halloween costumes” you can have a price extension for “boys costumes, girls costumes, mens costumes, and womens costumes” each would send the traffic to their corresponding page and I recommend you put the price of the lowest priced costume to attract more clicks. For example for “boys costume” you would have Boys Costumes as the header then a short description like “Buy quality boys costumes” send the traffic to the boys page and then have the lowest priced costumes price being advertised which would look like “from $5.99”. 

From my own experience, I have found a way to set up price extensions for $0 items. To set these up I use the contact us page, the request for quote page, and then an eBook page or two. Below is an example of how to set up “free price extensions”.

Review Extensions*

Although review extensions are no longer available on Adwords, these were great to highlight positive reviews online. I would find reviews that customers left for the company and then use the paraphrase option to customize the review. 

The best reviews were the ones from Google my business because as the source I was able to use “Google”. How awesome does that look when Google is saying “This is a great company!” or “Excellent customer service!” These extensions were clickable, so you were able to see if the source was legitimate and they really stood out. I’m going to miss these extensions, but I’m looking forward to the next ad extension Google rolls out to replace these.

Promotion Extensions

Promotion extensions are the newest extensions out there on AdWords. These are great to showcase a promo that you have going on for a specific holiday or if you always have a discount on your website; this extension is great to highlight that offer. 

For example if you were running a special Easter discount you can select “Easter”, add a header such as 15% Off and then add a short 20 character or less description, and add a landing page; you can even select a date the deal starts and ends. Because I am also looking for a way to get my clients a competitive advantage I found a way to offer a “free” promotion extension deal. 

There will be another blog post about how to set this up, but in short under percent off, select 100% off. Then in the description section you can add “Get a free quote!” or “Free eBook download!” This makes the offer free and it gets approved on AdWords. Price extensions are clickable, and on mobile devices can take up 2 lines, making your ad appear bigger and pushing down your competitor’s ads further.

Conclusion

I hope you learned a lot from this blog about the different ad extensions on Google AdWords and I strongly encourage you to add as many extensions to your account as possible; as long as they make sense to your business. 

As you can see ad extensions will help your CTR increase, help you create a bigger ad, and help the end user in Google learn a little more about your business before they click the ad. Please feel free to comment below and tell me which ad extension is your favorite and which one(s) you have seen the best results from.

 

References: https://jonathandarcio.weebly.com/google-adwords-ad-extensions.html