The Site Links enables to put extra keywords in order to lead to other portions on your site, aside from the homepage. With this, you can cut to the chase and access the information they desire without having to start from the homepage.
Google Adwords’ Site Links,
while innovative, is quite overlooked when it comes to site promotion.
Thankfully, you don’t have to be part of that breed. Today, I will show you how to exploit this nifty tool of Adwords, and use it to your advantage.
The Site Links feature enables you to put extra keywords in order to lead to other portions on your site, aside from the homepage.
With this, people can cut to the chase and access the information they desire without having to start from the homepage.
The privilege of using this feature is handed out to those who bid for a certain keyword and have their site appear for it.
For example, you have a site called Siteclicks.com, you would bid on “siteclicks”to ensure it gets the first result. Google can give you up to 4 additional Destination URLs for your ad, for users to quickly access the information they want.
In the Adwords Interface, Sitelinks could be located in the Campaign Level. But not all ads will have Sitelinks connected to them, so you have to choose the campaign you will attach the Sitelinks to wisely.
You will also be given the option on how you would want to display your sitelinks, whether in a straight line, or in a line-by-line (many row) formation.
Once the Sitelinks are saved, they will show up in the Ad extensions section, together with related metrics (clicks, impressions, CTR).
The ads’ main destination URL is still the URL considered for the landing page quality for individual ads.
This helps to promote new products or non-performing ones. But Google will still check the relevancy of such links to their corresponding pages. So it is important to note the relevancy of the keywords to use.
Here are just some advantages for using Site Links:
• You can choose your niche before users access your site.
• You can segment a main brand further into sub-brands while staying focused on the main brand
• You can direct people from your main page directly to the pages that have the information they searched for
• You can include more text in the setup process. The text you include should have keywords in it as much as possible, but you also need to prevent overspamming and do it in the most stylistic manner possible.
• You can get additional links to content deeper in the sites (you are given up to 4 additional destination URLs)
Just like the whole Adwords setup, using Sitelinks proves to be tricky. So, for a maximum experience of the feature, we suggest following the said guidelines to produce better Sitelinks:
• Create a navigable landing page
• Pay attention to the keyword positioning (not very repetitive text for links)
• Pay attention to the other content (headers, titles, etc.)
Apart from that PPC stats are lifted, most significant of which is the one for clickthrough rate.
The better people are directed to the ideal page they are looking information for, the better that there will be a conversion.
Google reports early users of Sitelinks had a 30% increase in CTR. Some brands also reported brand PPC sales increases in the 15-40+% range.
In lieu of this, knowledge of the importance of clickthrough rate gives us a chance to enhance the effectiveness of our site through SEO.
As a rule, linking to high converting ads will increase your CTR. In choosing campaigns to which Sitelinks should be assigned, one should keep in mind that it should be assigned to very good ads. With AdWords, you should be able to monitor the impact created by each ad.
The monitoring could be done by trial and error. You could choose to run test campaigns, one with Sitelinks and one without. After a certain period of time, check the CTRs that each gets. If one is significantly higher than the other in terms of CTR, consider this to be your preferred ad. Use the tagging option on Google Analytics to see the links clicked on.
Finally, note that one of the important things to note is the text for the Links. Here are pointers to remember when writing the Site Link text:
• Site Link should be used as a summary for the page it links to
• Concise text as opposed to long winded descriptions
• Clear descriptions of the actions you would require from users
Since the SEO value of a site is crucial when choosing your Site Link text, it’s best if you can look to keyword tools for keywords pertaining to your site that would rank highly and are possible targets for people who search. The KeywordSpy service, for example, could come in handy in two ways:
1. With KeywordSpy Research, you can type in a keyword, find out the synonyms for that keyword through the Related and Similar Keywords tabs, and also consider misspelled versions of the keyword (for better SEO) through the Mispell tab. Helpful metrics such as Search Volume should guide you into discerning the best options for text.
2. With KeywordSpy Tracking, you can enter all of the keywords and track their performance over Google, Yahoo and Bing, and in up to over 30 countries. By doing so, you can single out the keywords which do well in SEO through their corresponding metrics (which are updated in real time). Furthermore, you can use the keyword suggestion tool, which shows keywords also used by the domains tracked by the system, and consider them as well for Sitelinks incorporation.
In addition, both modules are available in the Professional account, so you can hit two birds with one stone on this task should you choose to use that package. Cool, isn’t it?
Site Links on Adwords is a promising and bright opportunity, and you can either use it to your advantage or waste it. With the tips I’ve given you, hopefully, you can usher yourself on to Adwords success via this valuable new feature.
