Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Since the introduction of SiteLinks, Google has been collecting a lot of data, as well as experimenting with a plethora of expansion opportunities. The conclusion to their never-ending testing and tweaking has been called “one of the strongest performing experiments” at Google.  Enhanced, augmented, amplified, or upgraded – any way you put it, the Google SiteLinks Extensions have grown up and out, literally. SiteLinks blossomed from a few lines of directed links to full-fledged custom ads created by advertisers.

On February 14th, as Google took the cover off the Enhanced SiteLinks experiment, and worldwide advertisers should be excited to see the new amazing opportunities available to them.  Advertisers can now show their original ad, as well as four additional ads pulled from active ads closely related to the SiteLinks in their campaign.  This new feature effectively triples the real estate for the advertisement!

See an example of Google SiteLinks here.

Wouldn’t it be nice if these Enhanced SiteLinks were simple to implement? Unfortunately, they are not.

As with many of the new (and somewhat confusing) intensified features Google AdWords rolls out, Enhanced SiteLinks can be complicated to master.  The account managers at JumpFly have found that best practice is to create ad copy as closely related to your SiteLink’s titles as possible.  If your account then meets the proper criteria, your SiteLinks may show as Enhanced SiteLinks.  If your account is given the opportunity to to display these new, powerfully dynamic ads, the rewards could be truly amazing.

Have you noticed that your top position AdWords ads are looking a bit different lately?  That’s because earlier this year Google made some changes to the way certain AdWords ads are displayed.  When ads appear in positions 1 – 3 (above the organic results on Google), ad copy with a first description line that ends with punctuation will see that first line automatically moved to the headline of the ad, separated by a dash.  This means that your headline, the portion of the text copy that gets the most attention from potential customers, is now able to provide even more information to Google users when your ad is being shown in the top three positions.  How great is that? 

Google made this update to description line 1 placement after performing tests and coming to the conclusion that it not only improves the user experience by providing searchers with more, relevant information easily and rapidly, but also improves the performance of the ad for the advertiser.  After doing some A/B ad testing with and without the punctuation at the end of description line 1, JumpFly’s account managers have seen the clickthrough rates (CTR) of the new ads with punctuation at the end of description line 1 skyrocket over the old ones without punctuation.  So much so that the JumpFly pay-per-click management teams now make sure that description line 1 ends in punctuation as often as possible.

Another change that Google recently announced is that top position ads will now be showing the display URL domain in the headline.  This update to how ads are displayed will allow Google searchers to be able to see and identify what site they will be taken to after they click on the ad and will help them decide whether or not they want to go to that site.  For AdWords advertisers, this is another huge change that is going to be great for them, especially for branding.  With the display URL being more prominent in the headline and still being shown in the display URL, your company name and web address exposure is doubled.  Sounds good to us!

Now, the question is:  How will Google AdWords decide whether to show the display URL or description line 1 after the headline?  Well, according to Google, BOTH can be displayed as long as the resulting headline is sixty-eight characters or less.  Imagine having a sixty-eight character, attention grabbing headline.  The amount of information you can get to potential customers in bold, blue text is unheard of and something all advertisers should try to capitalize on.

These changes to how Google AdWords ads are displayed are hugely important for advertisers.  In order to capitalize on them, you might want to call a professional PPC Management company like JumpFly.  We know the ins and outs of Google AdWords and we love implementing new, innovative ideas for our clients.

Google AdWords Remarketing enables advertisers to re-reach their website visitors in a unique and powerful way.   Once a user reaches a website using Google AdWords Remarketing, the user is cookied, enabling an advertiser to re-reach this visitor as he or she surfs the web and is exposed to ads on the Google Content Network (GCN).   This feature can be incredibly valuable to many advertisers when used appropriately.  Advertisers can use Google AdWords Remarketing in various ways, to achieve different goals.

One Remarketing opportunity is to simply re-reach website visitors as they are surfing the web, to remind them of a specific product or service just after leaving a website.  Advertisers can even reach these highly targeted visitors with a unique set of ads that cater specifically to them, perhaps offering a discount or other incentive.  A more advanced strategy enables advertisers to create a list of web visitors that actually do result in a sale, and then re-reach these specific customers again when the timing is right.  The same strategy can also be applied to reach back out specifically to web visitors who dropped out of the sales funnel for one reason or another.  Some companies can even find value in targeting one another’s website audiences.

Google is also beta testing Interest Category Marketing, which allows advertisers to reach a desired audience as they browse sites on the GCN.  Advertisers can select from a list of categories and show their ads to people that meet those specific criteria.  Advertisers can also select from a list of demographic categories such as gender and age range.  Interest Category Marketing enables advertisers to further qualify users based on multiple interests.  For example, a travel agent can choose to reach locally targeted people that have been identified as both sports enthusiasts and travel enthusiasts.  This travel agent can then create and deliver sports related travel ads to these potential clients as they surf the web.  The possibilities are endless.

What makes remarketing and audience marketing so unique is the ability to continually reach and re-reach users as they surf the web and deliver highly targeted ads to these users.  For those who have been around a while, it is awesome to see Google provide user tracking that works much like what was envisioned by the guys at the now defunct Engage Technology a decade back… Sorry guys, you were just way ahead of your time!

By Brad Garlin