It was only in February of this year that Google announced enhanced sitelinks on desktop search ads. Google combines closely related search ads with multiple sitelinks and displays the enhanced sitelinks on desktop search. The initial test results were very encouraging. It showed that enhanced sitelinks enabled ads to appear above organic search results. This was pretty useful and did lead to a lot of clickthrough rates for advertisers than the previous two or three line sitelinks.
If you want to prepare your campaign that will show enhanced sitelinks then you need to follow the following three tips carefully.
- Your ad has to be above the organic search result if you want the enhanced sitelinks to show. In case your advertisement has not made the required impression then you can try to increase the ads quality score, or increase your maximum permitted CPC (cost per click) bid, or a combination of both these strategies.
- You may add five to ten sitelinks with each one having a unique landing page
- Have many ads in your account that lead to the same landing page URLs and have these as sitelinks. Needless to mention that you need at least one ad to match each sitelink.
As you already know enhanced sitelinks are generated automatically and hence they will differ from one another. Another thing that you have to accept is that not all the sitelinkss will show even if you appear to be eligible.
There is no change in the way reporting and click costs work with enhanced sitelinks. They remain the same as with other forms of sitelinks. In case you want to optimize your account around enhanced sitelinks then you have to necessarily evaluate the changes against several other performance metrics like cost effectiveness, volume, etc. Don’t just go by checking whether clickthrough rate is increasing.