Online advertising is all about measuring results and monitoring your cost – that’s why it is so important for advertisers to focus on tracking and accountability.  By tracking the actions people take on your website after clicking your ad, you can determine the answer to the fundamental question: Is my ad campaign helping me make a profit? Online tracking software such as Google Analytics allows you to identify the top converting portions of your PPC campaigns and effectively cut campaign waste that’s negatively affecting your performance and CTR. This gives you the opportunity to make informative decisions when it comes to your ROI.
But, what about tracking offline conversions such as phone calls? How would you efficiently capture the offline impact of your online presence? After all, this could also be a large part of your campaigns spend. Call Tracking Software is the answer!

Last week we talked about the benefits of using Google Remarketing in display-based campaigns and discussed the ease of use, customisation opportunities, and overall flexibility provided by this targeting tool. Today I would like to talk about how to create effective remarketing lists and share a few ideas on what sort of visitors you should consider for remarketing.

Ad Sitelinks is a new Google Adwords targeting feature for paid search ads that allows you to increase the value of your existing ads by providing targeted and relevant links straight to the right landing pages for users whose search terms have triggered your ad.

Similar to the sitelinks which have been displayed for some time on organic Google listings, Ad Sitelinks gives you the option to display up to four extra destination URLs for users to choose from. This means that you can now provide more targeted options for highlighting certain products or services and create richer, more relevant ads that could improve the value of your brand terms and other targeted keywords.

You will find the option to set up Ad Sitelinks in your Campaign Settings tab. It will appear as “Show additional links to my site” under the “Ad extensions” section. You should remember that Ad Sitelinks is a campaign-level extension, so the links you create should be relevant to any ad within that campaign.

With Ad Sitelinks you can point users to specific information on your site such as special offers or store locators. Ad Sitelinks is great for seasonal businesses – this tool makes it easy to update and inform visitors about seasonal and limited promotions. It also means your ad will have greater visibility and provide current and relevant information.

Another benefit of Ad Sitelinks is the ability to address multiple goals in one ad copy (this is useful for company brand terms). For example if you want your visitors to complete a particular action after they have clicked through to your site, then use Ad Sitelinks to start guiding them to the right page before they have even landed on your homepage. Link to separate goal actions like ‘Request a Call Back’, ‘Sign up for Newsletter’ or ‘Find Nearest Stockists’ and test for the best results on your ads.

Ad Sitelinks can also improve keyword conversion rates – especially on high-traffic, broad terms. We all know how hard it is to predict what customers are searching for when they use generic keywords without wasting money. Using Ad Sitelinks, you can test different ads linked to multiple landing pages. Visitors like to have choice and variety when searching, so conversion rates will be higher if they can access their desired portion of your website quickly and easily.

Google has already released figures that show that Ad Sitelinks can boost your CTRs by more than 30% and significantly improve your Adwords conversion rates. We have already started testing it at Blueclaw and if you have too, let us know your thoughts on this new feature!