7 Essential Ad Extensions to Improve Your PPC by Daniel Gildersleeve #367

Hi, welcome to the SEO podcast number 367. I am your client results strategist, Charles Lewis. Chris is out today. We got Daniel Gildersleeve. I'm your content results specialist. Hey, this is a great podcast we have coming up. We got some more original content written by Mr. Gildersleeve. And what's today's content, sir? Today's content is about AdWords ad extensions. Seven ad extensions to improve your PPC. That's what he spends a lot of time doing. So we'll definitely talk about that some today. We did have some reviews, but Chris is not here, so we're going to let him get tatted up and deal with that next week when he gets back. We do have a tip from the previous podcast, and that tip is if your search volume is low, then be prepared to spend in other areas. What that simply means is that if people aren't on Google searching, then be prepared to add some budget to places like paid search and email marketing and things like that so you can continue to spread the word since people aren't actively looking for it. Boom. That was our tip. All right. I also had a question. I'm going to give a quick punch in the face to New Leaf. They posted some questions online. He sent us a question. He said, I have an awesome opportunity to get one of our projects featured on the manufacturer's website with the link back to our site. Should I use that link to link to my homepage or to the corresponding project page on my website or to the main landing page for that specific product? Is one better than the other in terms of SEO or should I just send it to the page that converts best? P-I-T-F-I-A. Punch in the face in advance. Well, punch in the face to you, Robert. Thanks for the question. Great. I'll kind of lower the question here. My easy answer is just send that traffic to the homepage, but here's why. Mainly because that homepage gets most of the visits. It probably

has most of the engagement already. And frankly, depending on what type of visitor lands there, the homepage is going to be the best place to kind of guide them down the right path. More importantly, that homepage likely won't change. Any internal landing pages or URLs, once you update those URLs may change and then you'll have to do a series of redirects or worse, have some broken links coming from a pretty quality article. So instead, just send them to the homepage and bolster the power of that specific homepage. Hopefully that works for you. Boom. Boom. Yeah, that's what Chris would have said. Boom. All right. You got any news? I do. Awesome. Big news, first of all, is Twitter. Twitter is dropping usernames from replies. What this means is you've got the whole 140 characters to respond. Not sure if that was a presidential choice there. Well, I knew something like that was going to happen because they wrote out a previous update where if you retweeted links, you know, those links wouldn't count against your character count. And so now they're including the at replies also. So I don't think it was an executive order, but probably influenced by the current events. Hey, Twitter stopped including the replies in my tweets. Yeah, it probably was. That was my Trump impersonation. It probably was. All right, my next big bit of news is about Google's A-B testing platforms. Okay, I read about that. They are out of beta. These include Optimize and Optimize 360, which are part of the Google Analytics 360 suite. These are free platforms with drag-and-drop visual editors that allow you to conduct experiments directly tied to your Google Analytics. That's a whole other can of worms, but that's some great news. If you're looking for a free way to optimize and A-B test your website, check out Google's Optimize and Optimize 360. Yeah, I've seen that. I'm usually logging into Analytics, and when you log in, you'll get, like, these options. Do you want Google 360, regular Google Analytics, or some other

Google stuff? And so, yeah. Not sure what that's going to do to Optimize and other paid software. Well, I think those are fine. Well, exactly. This is definitely a direct competitor to Optimize and those, and that is found in that 360 section inside Analytics. So, yeah, I'll check it out. All right, you got some news? I do have a piece of news, man. I want to give a punch in the face to Kelsey Jones. Kelsey Jones is leaving Search Engine Journal. So, we've reviewed, like, several of her articles. Like, over the past few years, at least eight of them. We've reviewed at least eight articles. And so, now she's leaving. She said she decided to give 100% of her attention to her own business, Moxie Dot, and StoryShout, as she continues to grow in this great industry. She was the news director and chief journalist at Search Engine Journal. So, punch in the face to you. Did some great work. Sorry to see you go. Guess I wanted to find another author. But, that's what's up. I got Bing news. I thought you were probably going to have this. So, Bing Ads is moving to daily budgets as of April 30th. They're totally 86 in the monthly budgets and going with straight daily budgets for all campaigns. Matter of fact, they said, Bing has announced it will stop supporting monthly budgets for all Bing Ads entry points by April 30th. This includes Bing Ads Online, Bing Ads Editor, the API, and mobile apps. By the end of April, all monthly budgets will be migrated to daily budgets. That's what's up, Bing. I can dig it. Should have been caught up. Let's see here. I got one punch in the face. This punch in the face came from Twitter. Punch in the face to Mr. Braun. He's at Braun DoggyBeds. He says, at eWebResults, truly educational. Love your podcast. Really, really love it. Thanks. Punch in the face to you, Mr. Braun. Thank you so much for your support. Well, that's all of our potatoes that

we really inhaled really, really fast in like less than 10 minutes. But I was kind of anxious to get to the article. We've got a great article today. It's called Seven Essential Ad Extensions to Improve Your PPC. And this was written by the great Daniel Giddersleeve. So I'll let you take it away. Yeah, we've been talking about ad extensions at the agency a lot here because Google has rolled out a couple of new ones, taking them out of testing and put them into your AdWords platform. So that's sort of inspired the conversation today. We realize that maybe not all of you understand all of the ad extensions, how powerful they can be at improving your click-throughs and your conversions. So first of all, you guys have seen me up here before, usually talking content. But in addition to SEO, I also manage our agency's PPC. I've been a Google partner since 2015. I've literally spent hundreds of hours creating and optimizing campaigns on an ongoing basis. For those of you that are huge eWeb fans, what that looks like on our team is that Charles here, the client results strategist, he reviews big-picture data and makes strategy-level decisions with our clients. That's what I do. Mm-hmm. And what I do, on the other hand, is I look at raw incoming data on a week-to-week basis, and I fine-tune the details. Mm-hmm. Generally speaking, that's how we break it down. It allows each of us to play to our strengths, and it ensures we have multiple sets of eyes on each campaign coming through. Yep, does that, and you know what it also does? It gives a good feedback loop for our clients. All right, so our clients usually talk to me. They give me some insight about what's going on, what changes they like or don't like. I can take that and give it to Daniel. And then while he's executing and tweaking and polishing your campaign, he can incorporate those changes from the client. And so it's definitely a win-win when you have multiple

people looking at the same account. Great. Definitely. So, ad extensions. Let's start with the basic definition. Google defines ad extensions simply as opportunities to expand your ad with additional information and give people more reasons to choose your business. They typically increase click-through rates and include formats such as call buttons, location information, additional links, additional text, and more. And there is no additional cost to using them, but they will cost you the same as any cost per click when users engage with them. So today we're going to review the seven most common extensions, and we're going to go through them in the same order you find them in your AdWords platform. Now, look, before he starts on this first one, just for those who may not still understand it, if you do a Google search for whatever your key phrase is, and those results come up, those paid results, and you see the listing, you see the ad text, and then below that ad text, you see four, two, maybe six, depending on how many extensions are set up. Below that ad, those links that are relevant to that ad are the ad extensions that he's referring to. Excellent. And we're going to keep this rundown really simple. We're going to talk about what the ad extension is, why you should use it, and our best practices. Yep. So, first of all, not every ad extension is going to be right for every industry or business. You need to find the combination that works best for you. Google recommends to use all the extensions relevant to your business goals. Don't assume they're going to run all the time. They won't. Google's algorithm is going to help you out there. The extensions are going to show when Google thinks it's predicted to improve your performance. Remember, it's in Google's own interest to get you as many clicks, impressions, and conversions as possible. They want your business, your loyalty, and your incoming ad spend. And your ad dollars, exactly. Exactly. So, the first one, the most popular, most

well-known, are site link extensions. Site link extensions. These are like sub-ads directly below your ads. They have an additional title and two levels of description. They highlight relevancy. They feature other things you have that they might be interested in. They help establish authority. And most of all, they create what we call deep links into your website. This allows the user's opportunities to link directly to content that is relevant to them. They're like shortcuts leading directly to that product page. Or to that internal page or to whatever page on your site that you've identified as the site link that you want. Yeah. Our best practices for using these are to highlight additional services. These might be category pages. They're also for creating great value-added propositions. If you want to link them to your financing plan, to your 100% guarantee, your FAQ page, your coupons, this is the place to do it because they can see coupons and go directly there. Yeah. One of the things about site links is what I kind of recognize is that people who search online, they're usually researching or have an idea about what they're looking for. And so they may not know if you actually have that content on your site, though. And so site links do a great job of showing people quickly what internal pages they may be interested in based off of what they searched. So definitely take advantage of linking to those FAQ pages, those coupon pages, or whatever page fits your sales process, right? If people need coupons when they come, then that should probably be a site link so they can get to that coupon faster. Or maybe you want to get a quote first. Or maybe your site link could be a quote request page. Things like that that'll make these site links definitely help create more user engagement as they click. Absolutely. And if you're a data geek out there, you know that when you change your ads, you lose your performance data, you've got to go back and compare it to

the ad that was removed when you replaced it. Site links aren't like that. When you switch your ad copy in your site link, it's going to leave the data there. The historical data remains. That's what's up. All right. Number two. Boom. Call-out extensions. All right. So these are very similar to site links. They provide additional info, but they typically need no explanation, and they're not links. So these are used for providing additional features and benefits that highlight things about your product and service that don't need explanation but add value. I'll give you a couple examples that's going to make total sense. Free shipping. 24-7 customer service. Price matching. Over 200 styles. Pet friendly. Money back guarantee. Yeah, all of these call-outs, the whole purpose of the call-out is meant to drive engagement, and what we realize is drive engagement based off of that user's emotion, right? If these people are in a buying situation or a purchasing situation, emotion drives that purchasing decision. And so if it's I can save money, if it's limited time only, limited, you know, while supplies last or whatever your call-out is, those type of call-outs, free shipping, they encourage users to go ahead and click and take advantage of that call-out, of that offer. Your call-out really should support what your call-to-action is, right? And so if your call-to-action is order today, then your call-out should say free shipping, right? So you can order today and get free shipping. And so take advantage of the call-outs. Like you said earlier, they're free, and they're not clickable, but they definitely enhance the ad for sure. Yeah, and if you're writing ads for AdWords, this is going to take the stress off you to get everything valuable out of that limited description. Use the call-outs. Definitely. All right, number three. Three. Structured snippets. Now, these aren't used as often, but they probably should be. They should be, yep. Because they're another way to highlight specific aspects of your business. What happens is you get to use one of 12 predefined headers,

amenities, brands, courses, degree programs, destinations, featured hotels, insurance coverage, neighborhoods, service catalog, shows, styles, types. And then you give a list of one of those subheaders. Why do we do this? One, to help people instantly find out more about what you offer. And two, to improve your relevance and hopefully your ROI. Best practices are brands. If you're selling TVs, let them know you've got Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, or types of devices, laptops, smartphones, computers. Or if you're in the travel industry, perhaps destinations. Let them know you go to Jamaica, Hawaii, Tahiti, whatever it is. The good thing that really got me about structured snippets is this is really another form of schema that Google is applying directly to AdWords. And so we apply schema to your sites to mark up stuff like your name, your address, your phone, your menu, your products, and things like that. Well, here's a structured markup we can add to AdWords to tag things like the brand you carry, the prices of those products you offer. Like you said, destinations and things like that. So take advantage of it from that perspective. Yes, it will increase ROI, but just definitely lets AdWords know what this article is really about, what they're going to find on the page if people click through. And that should definitely increase your quality score, increase click throughs, and everything else. So take advantage of the structured snippets, even if it's just to help your campaign perform better. Take advantage. All right, number four. Boom. Call extensions. Different from call outs, these are called extensions. If you are a local service business, this is probably the most important extension you should be using. These add a call button directly connecting users to your phone number. Mm-hmm. From the search page. Right, so this is from the search engine results page. They didn't click. They didn't have to land on your website first. This is from the search page, a call button. Yeah, if you offer an emergency repair of any sort, that's when someone's just looking

for the call button. They don't want to know how long you've been in business. They don't care. They don't want to know your pricing. They want to know that you can answer the phone immediately. Mm-hmm. All right, why do we use them? One, we're giving users more control and more choice. They can still click the ad and go to your website, or they can click the button and go directly to the back phone, to your phone line. The best practices, number one, make sure there is someone there to answer the phone quickly and professionally. Do not let these phones go to voicemail or after-hours voicemail. So, set your schedule to use them only during business hours. Yep. Additionally, use call tracking. And for the people answering the phone, use a script. Think about what they're going to say when that person pushes that button. Because if you don't know what they're going to say, you're just flushing your ad money right down the drain. Yep, definitely, definitely. What I kind of added to this is you want to make sure that you have your process and you understand what your process is. So, if you know that your sales percentage goes sky high with phone calls instead of contact forms, then you're probably pushing for phone calls and using call extensions as a way to do that. Now, with that being said, you want to make sure that you have the right person, like he said, following the right script in the right place while you have those ads running. Because, from what I understand, clicks that do happen with the call extension tend to be higher than normal clicks, especially if it's a click-to-call situation. And you want to make sure you're not wasting that click or, frankly, that person's time. You want to make sure that you have the best possible opportunity to close the deal. And so, if you're going to pay for calls, have your top salesperson answer the phone. Have a system in place that's, frankly, pretty aggressive. Because, if

they called you, they called the next listing also or whoever else was using call extensions. And so, you want to make sure that you're able to take advantage of it. What you don't want to do is pay for this click, get the call, and then you can't take advantage of it. That just really, really sucks. Absolutely. Call extensions are a must-have, especially if you provide a service and you want people to call you. Then use the call extensions, definitely. Absolutely. Number five. Bam. Message extensions. All right. Ding, ding, ding. This is new. You guys might not be using this yet. We need like a bell or a dinner triangle or something. I think a better term for message extensions is text message extensions. They're very similar to call extensions. But instead of seeing the call button there on your smartphone, you're going to see the text button. And when you push it, it's going to pop up a pre-populated field. That's one that you, as the AdWords creator, is going to pre-populate. Okay, that's what I was going to ask. With a message. So we can control what the pre-populated message says. Absolutely. So imagine you pre-populate your message to say, go ahead and hit send for 10% off whatever it was you was looking for. Right? That type of pre-populated message. I'd hit send. All right. But you need a legitimate mobile phone number on the other end. You need someone whose phone or business phone is dedicated to answering these text messages. Yep. We use these to give users even more control over their experience and how they want to contact you. And best practices for this is use it to check inventory. If you're an auto dealer, for example, and you say limited supply of vehicles, they can check in and see what kind of cars you've got. Book an appointment. Get a quote. Ask for info. Request a service. Again, make sure there's someone ready to answer quickly and professionally. And set a schedule. If you don't want to answer text

messages in the middle of the night, then don't turn it off. What I said was understand who your target is, right? When you're doing pay-per-click, you have to understand who your target is. How do they search? What type of device they're using? Where are they searching at? But understanding who your target is and how they engage can help you determine what type of extension you need. So, for example, me, I'm 37. I'll be 38 next month. You know what I'm saying? And I text. I will likely text before I call you. And so, if I'm your target, then using a text message extension is probably a good idea. Maybe you're going after millennials. They definitely text. And so, if that's your target, then, yeah, you would. Matter of fact, every millennial I know prefers text over a phone call. They just won't call. Matter of fact, even if it's an emergency, they'll just send you repetitive text before they actually pick up the phone and call you. This is true. This is true. And so, if that's your target, then text extensions should definitely be an extension you use. Because there are people who really just don't want to talk on the phone. They don't want to call, but they don't mind texting. Remember, know your demographic. The younger your audience, the more likely they are to use text extensions. The older they are, the least likely they are to use. The more likely they are to call. They'll use the call extension. All right. Know your audience. Number six. Six. Location extensions. All right. Again, if you're a service business, this is probably second most important to that call button. It's also perfect for restaurants, for stores. If you depend on foot traffic coming in the doorway, you need to use location extensions. This adds addresses, maps, distances to business, and other details to the ad. The reason I say other details is because there's a difference to the way they show up on mobile and the way they show up on desktop. We're

not going to go over all those details right here, but it's a little bit different. On mobile, it'll tell you how far you are from that destination. And it'll link to, depending on your device, I believe, that ad extension will also link to your nav application. Like, if you do that search and you click that address, yeah, your nav will automatically open up. Absolutely. On the mobile device. Desktop doesn't do that. Now, to set this up, here's the catch. It must sync with your Google My Business profile. Uh-oh, that means you should be verified. If you don't have a Google My Business profile, pause this podcast and go do that because that is super important and make sure it's verified. Go claim it, verify it, get it approved, and then unpause it and finish setting up your location extension. All right. Our best practices for this, if you need people coming in your front door, always use location extensions. You can't customize them. You don't need to write any ad text. You just need to link your address and Google My Business with your AdWords account and say, I want location extensions running on this campaign. So, here's a quick note, something I came up with recently. If you've recently added a second location by the same name, by chance, it's not going to automatically populate that second location extension in your account. If this is you, remove the first location extension and then add them both together. Exactly. That's interesting. I'll say this. Location extensions are definitely great for foot traffic. But I'll say this. The ad text that you have on that ad, right, because we're still talking about an ad and then this is the extension of the ad. If you're using the location extension, then your ad text should really support the extension. So, if your location extension is showing how to get to your location, then your ad should probably talk about come see us for this or in-store specials or something like that. So, people will be encouraged to

take advantage of the location extension. Definitely. If you're running a national campaign, by the way, and you happen to have a physical location, but your campaign is national, don't use location extensions. Yeah, don't use location extensions. It doesn't make sense. Maybe have a separate campaign in your local area that is using them, but only use them when they make sense. Number seven. Seven. Price extensions. This is a good one. This is another ding, ding, ding. Here's a new one for you. This is a box that appears just below the text ads on both desktop and mobile that allows you to provide users with pricing details about your business. It shows one to eight different price cards. They're very similar to shopping ads. Except you don't have to have all of the requirements. Merchant set up and everything else. Exactly. Interesting. Each price card has a unique URL that allows users to navigate directly to their chosen item. All right? There are nine types of price extensions you can use. Brands, events, locations, neighborhoods, product categories, product tiers, service categories, service tiers, and services. Interesting. We use them to showcase your offerings and prices. It, again, creates a deep link, a shortcut that leads deeper down the conversion funnel. Now, here's the trick. This is the best practice. You have to let the product, service, and prices speak for themselves. Promotional text, words that say sale, free, limited, are not allowed, and they will disqualify your ad from showing. Let the products and the prices speak for themselves. Be competitive. At the end of the day, you have to be competitive. You realize these people are doing a search. They're researching, and now you got a price extension there. Last thing you need is for your identical product that your competitor has, has his price with free shipping 20% cheaper than yours. Or worse, yours is 50% higher than the next person. In the search results, it's not the place to try and be extremely aggressive. No, you need to be extremely competitive and make sure

that your pricing is consistent with what the industry is seeing, so that way you can actually get those clicks. You may want to upsell them once they get on your page, but you want your prices that's displayed in the extension to be consistent with what other prices are. So here's a huge win for this that I was thinking about, Charles. Shopping ads, you cannot feature services. I could not put dog grooming. I could not put car wash. You can finally do that. Have a little box that says dog grooming, 40 bucks. Haircuts, $10. Women haircut, male haircut, kids haircut. So that's really the key here. Price extensions, yeah, because if you have physical products that you're shipping, frankly, you probably won't be using price extensions. You should be using shopping ads, right? But if you provide a service, then it's price extensions is definitely something you'll take advantage of. Pro tip, service providers. Yeah, use price extensions. All right, so those are our seven ad extensions. I'm going to leave you with some podcast tips that sort of summarize everything we talked about. Number one, use ad extensions to give your audience more control, enhance your relevancy, and increase your return on investment. Okay. And if you cannot get a particular extension to work, call up AdWords. They're very easy to get a hold of, and generally speaking, they're a very helpful bunch of geeks and nerds, and they really are. Yeah, it's a punch in the face to AdWords help. Yeah, thank you, AdWords. I love you guys. Last but not least, avoid redundancy in your site extensions. Nothing kills a good campaign like being hit over the head repeatedly by the same info. If you have an ad that says free shipping, a site link that says free shipping, a call out that says free shipping. Yeah, and I'm not interested in anything you're trying to ship to me. Yeah, that's spam. We have our own spam filters these days. And remember, there are exceptions to every rule. Pay-per-click often performs completely different

from one industry to another and from one audience to another. That's what's up. Hey, man, so I like the article. Seven Essential Ad Extensions to Improve Your PPC. Punch in the face to you. Great article by Mr. Daniel Gitter-Sleeve. Hopefully that helped somebody. Definitely helped me. So you have, let's see here. I should do this. If you are interested in improving your digital presence online, whether it's with email marketing or custom website design or search engine optimization or pay-per-click management or social media management, go to eWebResults.com. Click the free website analysis button. Take advantage of it. We'll get in contact with you and figure out how we can help you. That's all I got. Awesome. Until next time, I'm Charles Lewis. I am Daniel Gildersleeve. Bye-bye for now. It's your podcast, 367. Balance check. Sound check. Balance check. 367. Uh-oh. It's your podcast. Uh-oh. He ain't ready. Got to be ready, man. Oh, man. Shut up. All right. Sound check. Let's go. All right. All right. This is good. This is one for the record. Balance check. Balance check. 367. SEO podcast 367. Chris is out of town, so you get to hang with Daniel. Today, we're talking about PPC, seven ad extensions that you're going to need. Yeah. Let's go. SEO podcast 367. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.