This guest post is brought to you by Chris Barnwell.
An ad extension makes your PPC ad stand out. If you are lucky, your ad might be the only one using a particular type of ad extension. At the most basic, it helps give searchers more information about your company. It also helps increase your ad’s real estate.
What are these ad extensions on Google AdWords? There are eight different types.
1. Location Extensions
Your text Location extensions allow you to easily give out your contact information, including your address and phone number, along with a link to provide directions to those interested in visiting your physical store. These usually turn up if your store is near the searcher’s location or if they include a location in their search term that matches your address.
Any business with a physical location could use location extension. If you have a local brick and mortar business, you would benefit tremendously by being able to lure people who are nearby or within your locale to come visit your store.
It may be seen not just on Google AdWords ads, but also on Google Maps, Search Network and its partner sites.
2. Call Extensions
Call extensions will show your phone number. If the user is using a mobile device or a smart phone in searching, he or she will be able to click on the call extension and contact you.
Businesses who have a brick and mortar store, or those who would rather entertain customers by phone, can use the call extension to their advantage. If you have a product that is complicated to explain and difficult to understand, your Web site might prove to be the wrong choice to send potential customers to. By letting them call you, a live customer service representative may be able to explain it better to them and field their questions.
What’s more, if people are using smartphones to search, they will be able to call you more conveniently. They do not have to write down the number and tap it in. They only need one click!
3. Sitelink Extensions
If you have a lot of products requiring a lot of landing pages, you might benefit from using sitelink extensions.
Sitelink extensions allow you to have an additional of two, four or six links below your ad. These links should be unique as per Google’s guidelines and would point to different pages on your site. You can use these to specific products such as sweaters, jackets and rain coats or product lines such as clothes, shoes and hats. The text you use should be short and direct to the point.
Sitelink extensions may not always appear, but if you have a high quality score, that often translates to a higher likelihood of appearing.
Sitelink extensions not only bring more pages to searchers, but also allow you to ensure that your ads are more or less relevant to what your customers want. It brings customers to different sections of your site too. These are very easy to update and can help you gain more real estate on the page you appear in.
4. Product Extensions
If you have an e-commerce site, product extensions can help you present different products alongside your ad.
For example, somebody searches for DSLR camera and your ad is triggered. If you have more than one DSLR camera in your offering, a select few of these will show up with the ad along with their prices.
You would need to set up your Google Merchant account for this one as product extension links usually take searchers to the destination page found on your Merchant Center account. What’s more, potential customers can get more information just by looking at your ad. They get to choose as well.
Product extensions only appear on Google Search and the Google’s mobile search when done on high end smartphones.
5. Social Extensions
Social extensions show how many +1s you have on your Google+ page. Social extensions allow people to +1 your site to publicly endorse your business.
These are great if you want to engage your customers more and present yourself to their friends. This can give you credibility and people would be more likely to trust you if you have a lot of people giving you their stamp of approval.
6. Seller Ratings
Seller ratings allow your customers to rate your business and leave a review. Seller ratings pertain to the overall experience rather than focus on a particular product. Seller ratings are aggregated by Google Shopping.
If you have a good rating, you might want to use this to attract more people to your site. If you have great customer service, then your customers might just do you a favor and leave you a positive rating.
7. Communication Extensions
This is relatively new and is not yet available to all advertisers. Communication extensions give businesses an easy way to collect information about searchers. You can offer to give them discounts or have them subscribe to your newsletter by entering their e-mail address without moving away from the search results.
So if you have a great e-mail list that brings you a lot of revenue, you might want to wait for Google to finish its beta tests and release this to everyone!
8. Live Chat Extensions
Another type of extension being beta tested by Google right now is the live chat extension that allows your ad to have a button that connects searchers to your customer service representatives via live chat.
This makes it easier and more convenient for people to get in touch with you and have their questions answered.
You can find more info on using Google AdWords extensions here.
Conclusion
As you can see from what I outlined above, using extensions can significantly improve your ads visibility and consequently click through rates (CTR). Since using the extensions is free, you just need to invest a bit more to figure out which exactly extensions you need and how to properly set them up. The need to use them even more if you have a local business or doing local SEO for such a business because many of the extensions come in really handy specifically for that realm of online marketing.
This guest post is brought to you by Chris Barnwell of SEO Inc.; a PPC Management company whose expertise cover all aspects of both Paid and Organic search optimization.
