Pay Per Click campaigns now have a feature that allows you to “deep link” into a client’s website with your ads to multiple pages — a way to improve your user experience for branding campaigns.

Site links are a list of links to pages within a site that appear right below a listing within the results page — both for paid and organic search results.

Here’s an example from Bing:

Sitelinks on Bing Search Engine

Some caveats for paid sitelinks:

* Branded terms work best for sitelinks. If necessary, you might have to create a separate campaign just for branded terms, since the sitelinks option is available on a campaign-level basis. This might be a good opportunity to test whether this option actually saves you money on clicks on your branded terms. Use “phrase match” option with these keywords to ensure that the actual branded term is included in the search terms.
* The actual links *must work*. Unfortunately for large megasites, intermittent page errors is a huge problem. If you create a site link to a “Contact Us” page, then make sure that the page actually works. Then, set up a monitoring tool that scans your client’s site for 404 or other errors every day. If you do not, then you run the risk of people clicking on the paid sitelinks — and racking up PPC charges for you — even though the clickers will end up on broken pages.
* Check your metrics. See what are the most popular pages visited by organic and paid visitors– you might be surprised. And yes, the “careers” or “job opportunities” page is probably in the top 5 of visited pages. That’s okay — use those pages for sitelinks anyway.
* In order for the sitelinks to appear, the ads must appear in the first position for paid search results and have a high quality score.

Activating Sitelinks in Google

The first step to activating this feature is logging into your Adwords account, and selecting the campaign on which you would like display site links. From there you will click on “Settings” and scroll down to the “Networks, devices, and extensions” section. (see image below).

In this section, you will click on the “edit” button associated with the “Ads Extensions” category. This will bring up editable fields, where you can manage your Adwords site links.

Good luck! This is a relatively new feature with PPC campaigns, so keep in mind that you will have to monitor and measure their effectiveness against your baseline results before you separated the branded terms.

You can promote a location-based business in Pay Per Click ads now with a new feature on Google’s ads: the local extensions.

Here’s an example of two Phoenix Valley merchants who use Pay Per Click ads with local ad extensions:

(Phoenix PPC ads)

The local extensions feature do not cost extra, but will enhance your Phoenix area Pay Per Click ad by adding a more detailed location address for viewers. Experience has proven that Internet searchers are more likely to click on ads that indicate they are for local merchants in their area, so the more address details on your ad – the better.

In the past, the only way to indicate in an ad was through using geo-targeting with Google. With geo-targeted ads, the metro DMA area would appear under the ad like this:

(Example of a Phoenix PPC ad)

How do you set up your Phoenix Pay per Click ad with a local extension? The first step is to create a Google Places (also known as a Google Local Business account) account (see other entries in this Phoenix online marketing blog about that topic).

Go to the Campaign Settings Tab, then down to the Ad Extensions area. If you already have a Google Local Business Account, then go with the option to link it to your Google Places account. If not (and a lot of PPC management specialists face this issue with clients!), then go with the option of entering in the address and phone number.

Then, fill out the Phone Extension section of the Extensions area, which will display click-to-call phone number on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers.

Make sure that you are approve the option for All Devices under the Networks and Devices area as well, to ensure that your ad will appear on iPhones and other cell phones when you do this as well.
Then, track your results under the Ad Extensions tab for your Pay Per Click ads.

For more information and proposals from a PPC management consultant at ArcherSEM—a Phoenix Valley SEO consulting firm that specializes in Pay Per Click campaigns – give us a call!

Running a Google placement campaign can be an exercise in …oblique-ness.  But you can sidestep all the aggravations of Placement-targeted Campaigns when you use them to test and tweak your creative messaging.

A little background on Google Placement-targeted campaigns:

1. Ads — both text and image — appear in the Google content network
2. The ads appear only on specific web sits that you select…or a subset of a website (such as a selection of pages from that site), or even an individual ad unit located on a single page.
3. Unlike ads that appear as automatic placements on the Content Network, you have control over these placements with bids

I found running and analyzing Placement Campaigns to be difficult. You cannot gauge whether your bids are ensuring that your placements are getting best placement, and it is difficult to analyze what placements are working — and why.

Although Google likes to tell ad managers that the Placement-targeted campaigns give you more control over how and where the placements appear — this is not necessarily so. The bidding process is very obscured by the system — there is no way to tell if the bids are getting your placements high enough to get sufficient visibility. Or…if you are paying too much for the placements. To make it even more complex when analyzing a campaign — a placement can be set up in multiple sizes (tile, leaderboard, ect), and results can vary wildly on the same web page, depending on the size and creative message of the placement.

The solution: don’t include placement campaign in your branding or banner campaign tools.

Instead, use Google’s placement campaigns as a laboratory to test the messaging and sizes of your creatives. If you have a client who wants to try out multiple messaging, then feel free to explore in Google-land. You can control where the placements are placed, so it will give you a clue about what web sites will work for the right messages.

So for example, if you want to test if a “10% Off” coupon or a “Buy One, Get One Free” offer will work in a Power Mommy blog site…then set up a test. Run both placements in all the Power Mommy blog sites in the network…alternating one day with the 10% offer and the BOGO offer on another day. Then, analyze the results after two weeks.

Voila!

You have figured out what works with this demographic niche — and what publishing media works with this message.