Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Adding Sitelinks to Ads to Improve CTR

The problem

A client came to us wanting more clicks. This client sells a product to a very niche audience, so it was crucial to make the most of every impression. With initial CTRs of 3.93% in one campaign and 5.90% in another, we weren't dealing with an unappealing ad (those are always the easiest to improve). And for most of their keywords, they had no ad competition, so there was no way to be “more” compelling and relevant. Before we began split testing ad copy, we wanted to find a simpler and quicker way to increase website traffic from the same ad.

The solution

We wondered whether making the ad bigger and more authoritative-looking would boost CTR. The natural choice was to include the Ad Sitelink extension, which adds up to four additional text links below the ad as long as the keywords' Max CPC and Quality Scores are high enough for Google. (See Chapter 8 for more about ad extensions.)

The results

Sitelinks produced instant increases in CTR, at a much higher level than is typical by simply improving the ad message. In one campaign, the average CTR increased from 3.93% to 6.57% when sitelinks were present. In a second campaign, the increase was greater, from 5.90% to a whopping 14.57%.

Interestingly, the sitelinks did not increase CTR by getting clicked themselves. When we segmented the data by click type, we found that the sitelinks received much lower CTRs than the headlines. Instead of providing greater relevance, the sitelinks appear ...