How to Write Great Sitelinks For Google Ads

Experienced PPC marketers know that the secret to successful PPC campaigns that stand out in the digital jungle of SERPs is creating a tight bond between ad copy, extensions, and landing pages.

Typically, people who click on your ad on the search engine results page (SERP) are directed to your landing page. However, more often than not, you may find it useful to direct your visitors to other sections of your website or add multiple options for them to choose straight from the SERP. So, how do you do that? How do you add this extra layer of customization to your Google Ads – The answer is sitelinks.

Table of contents

• • 1. What are sitelinks?
  • 2. Sitelinks differ depending on the device
  • 3. How sitelinks work
  • 4. Why you should use sitelinks in your Google Ads
  • 5. What to keep in mind when setting up sitelink extensions for your Google Ads
  • 6. How to add sitelink extensions
  • 7. Device preferences
  • 8. How to schedule a sitelink
  • 9. Final thoughts

What Is a Sitelink in Google Ads?

The term actually speaks for itself – sitelinks are links to various pages on your website. Once you set up sitelinks, they will appear below your ad text, giving your users up to eight extra links to click.

Sitelinks contain three elements – one headline (the link text) and two description lines. The headline appears as a clickable text and has a 25-character limit. On the other hand, the Google sitelink description lines appear as non-clickable texts and have a 35-character limit per description line.

Sitelinks are great for running successful branded campaigns. While your ad takes visitors to your homepage, you may probably find it useful to add direct links to your most popular pages, such as Products, About, Contact Us, Blog Posts, and so on.

Let’s say you are advertising snickers. The same model could come in different variations for men and women. In this case, it would be useful to set separate sitelinks for male and female models, assuming they are on separate pages on your website. This way, you will drive more meaningful clicks as your visitors jump exactly to what they want to buy. This also means a better user experience which leads to more site visitors and ultimately more sales.

Sitelinks Differ Depending on the Device

Ads that display entire sitelinks are usually placed in the first or second ad position of Google’s search results. Ads in lower positions may only show the site links’ headline or not show sitelinks at all. However, their formatting differs depending on the device, position, and some other factors. Google ads sitelinks that appear on desktops or laptops show between two and six links, and those that appear on tablets or mobile devices can show up to eight links. This is why it is important to create at least eight different options when setting up sitelinks.

Understanding How Sitelinks Work

Sitelinks can be added at either account, campaign, or ad group level, and you can also specify the link text that is shown to a searcher. The site links you add at the account or group level will potentially show with all the ads in the account or campaign.

Google will sometimes supplement your sitelink descriptions with information you provided taken from meta descriptions of the pages in question or borrow other ad text in your account. However, since Google’s AI picks text that it thinks will perform best, I suggest adding the details yourself when creating or editing sitelinks. By doing so, you will make sure that your sitelinks are described in the best possible way and that your searchers have no doubt about where they will land once they click on them.

Why You Should Use Sitelinks in Your Google Ads

There are many reasons to add sitelinks to your ads. One of the main reasons is that you can easily keep them up to date for sales and special promotions. This will save you a lot of time since you don’t need to make new ads for your promotions. You can simply change the link text and URLs to match your offers.

Sitelinks can increase your presence on SERPs by increasing the size of your ad, making your ad stand out amongst your competition.

Since sitelinks provide users with suitable links and landing pages that match their intent, they can potentially increase your conversion rates. If implemented strategically, they can be used to funnel your visitors toward a conversion point much faster.

Sitelinks provide detailed data on the clicks they generate. The statistics are available by campaign, ad group, or ad. By segmenting these statistics, you can gain valuable insight into trends and the number of clicks that occurred on the individual sitelink compared to the ad text.

Sitelinks are flexible additions to your ads that provide more context to your users. For example, you can create mobile-optimized sitelinks and specify the dates, days of the week, or even times of day they are eligible to show. Also, you won’t lose any performance data when editing them.

Sitelinks are free to use, which means they don’t increase your cost per click. You will be charged the same amount no matter whether the user clicks on your ad text or sitelink.

What to Keep in Mind when Setting Up Sitelink Extensions for Your Google Ads

Here are a few Google ads sitelinks best practices to remember when setting up sitelinks:

• Create at least two sitelinks to ensure that they are eligible to show on the search engine results page.
• Keep link text short—The shorter the links, the more they will be shown. This is why it is crucial to stay within Google’s sitelink description character limits.
• Match links with your website’s navigation setup—When creating sitelinks, make sure to take a look at your navigation bar. Matching the link text with sections in your navigation bar will make it easier for your users to navigate your website.
• Add descriptions—You should not trust Google’s AI to pick the text for you. Since they don’t reduce the number of sitelinks shown, we suggest you take your time and come up with sitelink descriptions that will be most helpful to your users.
• Avoid applying sitelinks on the account level. While you have the option to do that, it is better to create sitelinks that are relevant to your campaign strategy. This way, you will gain more insight into granular performance data for sitelink testing.
• Don’t use the same link text for more than one sitelink. You don’t want to confuse your future customers.
• Don’t create multiple sitelinks that lead to the same landing page.
• Google ads sitelinks will not serve if the landing page URL differs from the domain of the ad’s final URL.
• Don’t use symbols, excessive punctuation, or emojis.
• You should not use sitelinks to strongly focus on a certain message you wish to promote with your ads. Instead, it is better to offer your visitors a variety of landing pages to choose from.

How to Add Sitelink Extensions

Adding sitelinks is fairly easy. Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to do that:

• Navigate to Ads & extensions in the page menu and click on Extensions
• Click the plus (+) button and select + Sitelink extension
• From the Add to drop-down menu, select whether you wish to add the sitelink to account, ad group, or ad level
• You can use your existing sitelinks by clicking on Use existing and selecting the sitelink that you wish to turn on
• Click on Create New to create a new sitelink
• Enter the sitelink text and URL
• Though this step is optional, I highly recommend that you fill out the Description fields with the text you want your sitelink to display
• Click Save

Device Preferences

In this part of the article, I will show you how to optimize your sitelink ads to display on mobile devices for better sitelink performance:

• Navigate to Ads & extensions in the page menu and click on Extensions
• Navigate to the campaign that contains the sitelink you wish to optimize and click the pencil icon next to it
• A window should appear in which you need to click on the arrow in the top right corner
• Click on the Advanced Options drop-down menu
• Check the box next to Mobile
• Click Save

How to Schedule a Sitelink

Suppose you want to promote a special, one-time offer, and you need to schedule a sitelink to appear for a specific period. Here is how you do it:

• Choose the campaign that contains the sitelink you wish to edit
• Navigate to Ads & extensions in the page menu and click on Extensions
• Click on the sitelink you wish to schedule
• A window should appear in which you need to click on the arrow in the top right corner
• Click on the Advanced Options drop-down menu
• Set a start date and end date to determine the timeframe during which your sitelink will show
• Under Extension schedule, you need to select the days and times you want your sitelink to show and click Add
• Click Save

How To Measure Your Google Ads Sitelink Performance?

Like anything else on your ads campaign, you must test your sitelinks to understand how they are performing. Between regular updates and vast amounts of data, it can be difficult to find the insight you need to measure your ad campaigns.

In Google Ads, you can quickly obtain insight into how many clicks occurred while your sitelinks were displayed along with your ad. You can also segment this data to see how many clicks got each specific sitelink. However, the immediate data obtained from Google Ads is not always accurate, and you need to take one step further to see actual performance.

This is the most common way to check ad extension performance:

• Navigate to Ads & extensions Ads & extensions and click on Extensions
• Expand the Sitelink extension view
• Once there, click on Segment and then on Click Type
• There you will see the data for each sitelink ad

But don’t be fooled by those numbers. That report type details the performance of the overall add (main add + sitelink extensions). Many marketers make judgments based solely on those partial results. However, it’s crucial to focus on the performance of the ad extension itself as opposed to the entire ad. That will allow you to identify underperforming extensions and make adjustments accordingly.

This is how you separate both results:

• Click on the Segment button
• Choose This Extension vs. Other

That will separate the extension’s performance (clicks on that actual sitelink) from clicks on the overall ad. Now, you will have a more precise insight into each particular sitelink and whether improvements are necessary.

Final Thoughts

My PPC agency from Chicago hopes that this article has shown you what a powerful tool sitelinks can be in your advertising efforts. If executed properly, sitelinks can add a pretty thick extra layer of value to your Google Ads and do a great job in PPC strategy fulfillment.

Besides increasing your presence on Google’s search engine results page, these Google ads sitelinks also serve for a better user experience providing your future customers with more information on your offers and giving them the option to land directly on the page of their preference. They help increase your conversion rate by funneling your customers through the sales process in a more meaningful way. And all that with no extra charge.