Sitelink Extensions – Features, Best Practices & How to Create one

Sitelink extensions are the most commonly used of all Google ad extensions in AdWords. They are, by far, the most versatile of extensions and can be used across different industry verticals, across devices and can be used with minimal restrictions. In the following article, we’ll be discussion what a Google Sitelink extension is, how it works, and what are the features and benefits of using one. We’ll also be discussing how Sitelink extensions appear for Search vs Video campaigns and finally, how these extensions can be created.

What is a Sitelink Extension?

A Sitelink extension is a feature in Google Ads that allows you to add additional links to your Google ads. The Sitelink extensions would navigate people to specific pages on your website.

Example of a Sitelink Extension

The above ad is related to apartment reservations. In the above ad, the two links mentioned in the bottom (“Get In Touch” & “What’s At Wembley Park”) are the Sitelink extensions. Any user clicking on the main link (Title) would be navigated directly to the intended page as per the title, which is apartments near London, Mayfair. The Sitelinks, on the other hand, are providing additional information to the users and navigate them to different pages. In this case, the ‘Get in touch’ sitelink would take them to their contacts page, and ‘What’s at Wembley part’ would provide them with more information about the neighborhood.

Benefits of using a Sitelink Extension

• Additional information about your site – With Sitelink extensions, you’re able to convey more information about your website to the users.
• Improves CTR – With ad extensions in place, your ads tend to occupy more space in the SERP, thus increasing its chances of being clicked.
• Customizable Sitelinks for mobile – AdWords allows you to create mobile-optimized sitelinks, thus making them mobile-friendly.
• Time flexibility – The Sitelink extensions can be scheduled to a specific time of the day, thus making them appear only when you intend to.
• Updates easily – The link text the URLs can be easily updated as per your requirement, thus making them sales ready on-the-go.

How do Sitelink Extensions work?

The Sitelink Extensions can be added at the account, campaign, or ad group level. While creating the campaign, you can specify the text and the URLs that need to be used as a Sitelink extension. In case you haven’t mentioned description for your Sitelink extension, Google might show relevant description right from the URL mentioned for that page.

Depending on how granular your sitelink extensions are, the priority would be decided. If you have a sitelink at a campaign as well as ad group level, the later will triumph the higher-level sitelink.

Note – It completely depends on Google if a Sitelink extension is to be displayed along with an ad. There could be various reasons if you have a sitelink extension in place yet not being displayed. We’ve discussed the pre-requisites for Sitelink extensions to work later in the article.

How Sitelink Extensions appear?

The appearance of a Sitelink extension depends on variety of factors like the device, ad position, and other factors. Sitelink Extensions are compatible with Search campaigns and Video campaigns on YouTube. We’ll be discussing about them in detail:

1. Sitelink Extension for Search Campaigns

• For Search campaigns, the sitelink extension can appear in ads either at the top of the page or the bottom.
• A minimum of 2 sitelink extensions needs to be included as a part of the ad.
• The number of sitelinks that appear depends on the ad placement:

Sitelink extensions on Desktop

On the desktop, you can show up to 6 sitelink extensions. It may appear either on the same line or may fill 2 lines of your ad.

Sitelink extensions on Mobile

On mobile, you can show up to 8 sitelinks. They may appear side-by-side in a carousel format. However, if your ad appears on the very top position, the sitelinks would be more prominent, with just one sitelink on a single line.

Cost of adding Sitelinks to Search Campaigns?

Sitelinks for search campaigns are free to add – you’re only charged for clicks, in a similar fashion as the normal ad clicks would work. The only difference being, you won’t be charged for more than 2 clicks per ad impression.

2. Sitelink Extension for Video Campaigns

For video campaigns, the sitelink extensions may appear either before, during, or after the video on YouTube. In the case of mobile devices, the sitelinks only appear below the ads.

At least 2 sitelinks need to be mentioned for it to appear in the ad. You can show up to 4 sitelinks for an ad.

Cost of adding Sitelinks to Video Campaigns?

For video campaigns, you’re charged on a CPM basis (cost-per-thousand impressions). Which means you’ll be charged each time your ad is shown 1000 times.

How to create a Sitelink Extension?

Creating a Sitelink extension is pretty straight forward. There are multiple ways to add a sitelink extension – either you can add them right at the creation phase or you can add sitelinks to an existing campaign.

Creating a Sitelink extension for a new campaign

Follow the steps to add a sitelink to your campaign:

• Log in to your AdWords account.
• Click on ‘Create a new campaign’ and select the campaign goal and campaign type (make sure it’s a search or video campaign). Click Continue.
• Next, you’re in the ‘General Settings’ tab of your campaign. After providing relevant details of your campaign, if you scroll down toward the end of the page, you’ll find the ‘Ad extensions’ tab.

• Click on ‘Sitelink extensions’. You’ll be presented with the following screen:

• If you’ve previously created extensions for your other campaigns, you can find their details in this tab. You can re-use the same for multiple campaigns. Else, if will be a blank tab as shown above. Click on ‘New Sitelink Extension’ to add a new sitelink extension.
• Provide details related to your extensions in this tab.

• Make sure you create at least 2 sitelink extensions for it to be applicable. Also, it’s a good practice to provide descriptions for each sitelink extensions. In case you don’t, Google will automatically add some text from the mentioned page.
• If you want to run sitelink extensions during a specific time, click on the ‘Advanced options’ tab below. Here you can mention the duration during which you want your extension to be visible.

• Click on ‘Save’. The Sitelink extension is added to your campaign.

Adding a sitelink extension to an existing campaign

If you want to add a sitelink extension to an already active campaign, follow the below mentioned steps:

• Click on the campaign for which you want to add the sitelink extension.
• Click on ‘Ads & Extensions’ tab in the left pane.
• Click on ‘Add a Sitelink extension’.
• From the drop-down, select the level at which you would like to add the sitelink extension.
• Then, provide the details for the sitelink extension and click save.

That’s it. You’ve successfully added sitelink extension to your campaign.  

Why are my Sitelink Extensions not showing?

You may find that even though you’ve provided sitelink extension to your ad, yet they are not being displayed. This is a common behavior of ad extension as there are various dynamic factors that decide if extensions are to be displayed like Ad rank, quality and if the system has space for the extension to be displayed.

However, below mentioned are some basic requirements for sitelink extensions to be qualified to be displayed, or some of the best practices for sitelink extensions. Make sure your extension satisfies all of these:

• Duplicate Link Text – Multiple extensions used in a particular ad cannot have the same link text. Re-using the same link text for more than one sitelink extension disqualifies it.
• Duplicate URLs –
  • You cannot have sitelinks within an ad that points to the same landing page or the same content (~80% of the content should be unique for it to qualify).
  • You cannot have multiple sitelinks in the same campaign or ad group that points to the same landing page or the same content.
• Usage of third-party URLs – You cannot have sitelink URLs from a third party or that don’t match the domain of the ad’s final URL. There are very limited cases where Google allows a sitelink to point to a third-party site like a link to a YouTube ad, Linkedin profile, or other related ones.
• Usage of punctuation and symbols – Usage of punctuation and symbols in the link text or description that does not serve any purpose tends to disqualify the ad extension.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed about Sitelink extension, importance of it in an ad, how it displays itself in different campaigns and in different devices. We also discussed a step-by-step process to create the sitelink extension. And finally, what are the best practices or the reasons for the sitelink extensions to not be displayed.

Reference – Google Ads Help

FAQs