Capture Content Pattern
February 21, 2024
GoogleHow To's

How to add an extension

Does your content creation business feel like it’s falling behind to the competition? Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. Together, we can learn how to add an Ad Extensions to help your business get ahead.

What is an ad extension?

An Ad Extension can be anything from a link to a particular part of your website, call or text buttons, location information, additional text, ratings and so much more. Extensions make your ad larger and more robust, giving people more reasons to take action directly from your ads.

The three most common Ad Extensions for a business are Sitelink extensions, callouts and structured snippets. In addition to these three extensions, Google Ads offers many more such as location extensions which might be used to promote local business or call extensions. Allowing a business to directly receive calls from potential customers. We will break these down further below for you.

But first, there are two groups of Ad Extensions: Manual and Automatic Ad Extensions.

How are manual extensions different from automated extensions?

Manual ad extensions require you to manually fill out your business details while automated extensions do not. As you will learn below, Manual Extensions are much more powerful because they give you the power to customise the information for your business.

Let’s get started and break down every extension and identify which ones are the most effective for YOUR business.

AdWords Sitelink Extensions

Sitelink Extensions are the additional links you see on search results ads. These allow users to see a variety of offerings up front so when they click it is relevant to what they are looking for. It’s important to note that desktops will only show 6 sitelinks, while mobile users will see only 4 sitelinks. When adding descriptions for your sitelink extensions, make sure you are concise with your selling point. This is because only a maximum of 75 characters will display here. As you can see in the example below, Apple are direct with a feature, price and call to action of Buy Now:

AdWords Location Extensions

This extension will show your business address and hours of operation in your search ad. This is an absolutely essential extension if your business is seeking to increase your physical in-store traffic. To enable this extensions, your business must have and connect a “Google My Business” account to AdWords. This will also enable your business to display on a Google Map search.

Affiliate Location Extensions

If you are a large business selling products nationwide, then affiliate location extensions are a great addition. This will allow customers to find stockists of your products. Google will automatically run this for you once you have enabled the extension.

Structured Snippet Extensions

This is a great feature if you house multiple brands, services, destinations and so on. With the Structured Snippet Extensions, you are able to add three additional header lines of text to highlight more aspects of your business. You will need to keep it under 25 characters so again – short, sharp and sweet is the way to grab the users attention here.

AdWords Call Extensions

As self explanatory as this extension sounds, the call extension not only allows a business to show their contact number on the ad, but also it allows an additional level of customer automation as mobile users will be able to click and dial your business immediately. If you ad this extension, you must be prepared to actually receive telephone communication from customers. If the calls are unanswered or the right information is not ready on the call, this will leave the customer with a bad customer experience.

Message Extensions

If your business isn’t ready or suitable to receive calls, perhaps a text message is better suited. You can also add a call to action to prompt users to contact you via text message.

AdWords App Extensions

The App Extensions will allow to add a mobile app download button to your ad. This is pretty obviously only suited to business’ that have generated their own app.

AdWords Callout Extensions

Similar to Sitelink Extensions, Callouts allow your business to provide additional detail and relevant information to what the user has searched. The only difference is that Callouts do not allow clickable links. Instead they focus on the same call to action. There is a 25-character limit for callouts and are a great way to capture broad match keyword searchers.

AdWords Price Extensions

This is simply a way to advertise direct products and services with transparent pricing for the user. Price extensions will only appear on your ad if you are ranking #1 and you must have a minimum of 3 items you want to feature, however having at least 5 is best practice.

Promotion Extensions

A promotion extension will advertise coupons, sales and deals. Promotion extensions stand out with a price tag graphic and you are able to schedule promotion extensions within AdWords for custom events that are unique to your business. In addition to this, Google have pre-loaded promotions such as Christmas, Click Frenzy and Cyber Monday. If you use this extension, make sure the landing page users view after clicking your ad is relevant and further explains the promotion, especially if there are terms and conditions.

So now that we have explained the main forms of extensions, let’s break down how we can set these up together.

Open your Google Adwords account and select your campaign or ad group.

On the left hand side, select the Ads & Extensions tab.

Select the middle option in the top menu, ‘Extensions’:

Click the Plus + symbol to create a new extension. Here you can select the type of extension you wish to add. If you hover over each extension option, Google will provide a short explanation of what the extension is:

Once you have selected the type of extension, you can now enter the relevant information. As you enter this information, Google will update a preview of the ad extension and how it will display for a user.

You are done! Hit save and admire your new extension.

Now that we have mastered manual ad extensions, we can get deep into Automatic Ad Extensions – strap in!

Google being the smarty-pants it is, has the ability to pull data from various sources automatically to create extensions for your ads. This sounds amazing right? Starting to question why would you ever do it manually when you can rely on Google? Well, it’s not that simple.

You cannot control automatic ad extensions, meaning Google may pull messaging or data that you do not wish to align with your business as a customers first experience. Because of this, we recommend using manual ad extensions for that added control of your messaging and customer experience.

However, it’s not all risky. There are some automatic ad extensions that can be added to your text ads which do benefit your content creation business. we’ve noted them down below for you:

Dynamic Structured Snippets

Google can automatically show additional information about your content creation business that it deems relevant.

Social Extensions

Google will show users how many followers your page may have and in some cases, if the user has mutual friends with the company – personal, isn’t it?

Dynamic Sitelink Extensions

Google will add a link from your site or a piece of content that is receiving the most foot traffic

Seller Ratings Extensions

This is based on Google’s trusted review sources – so if you don’t have a lot or perhaps one poor review we would recommend switching this off

Previous Visit Extensions

This is one of the most recognised automatic extensions. It allows a user to see if they have visited this site recently and how many times. If you have a high return traffic to your site, this is a great tool.

Consumer Ratings Extensions

Google will generate ratings from certified Google sources and Consumer surveys.

Google intends to pull this data and display it for users to create a transparent journey and deliver the most relevant results to a consumer. If you feel your automated ad extensions are harming your business, you are able to switch these off.

If you have set up your Manual ad extensions, Google will always prioritise displaying these over the automated data that can be pulled about your content creation business. A great way to remember to complete your manual extensions is, if Google can’t find them they will automatically populate them for you in order to better the customers experience. It’s important to note however, no manual extensions are certain to stop automated extensions from showing. However, you can manually go into AdWords and stop all automated extension from showing. To do this, simply follow these steps:

Click the Extensions tab at the top menu and select an extension on an ad by checking the box to the left of the ad. Then click remove.

Open your Google Ads account and open your search campaign that is live

Go to the Ads & Extensions tab on the left.

If you are going to remove your automatic extensions, make sure it is for a genuine reason and not simply to do with the appearance of your ad or your own content creation business aesthetic. Why? Sometimes Google will keep pulling data that is performing well for your business. How can you check this? Easy – follow these steps:

Then select Automated Extensions report.

Click the ‘Automated Extensions’ tab on the top and click the view drop down menu

Select the Ads & Extensions tab on the left.

Open your Google Ads account and click through to the campaign you wish to check

This will allow you to see how users are interacting with the information the extensions are providing.

That’s it for setting up your Ad extensions. While sometimes time consuming, it’s important to note that adding extensions can improve your ads quality score and in some cases, allow your ad to rank higher than your competitors at no extra cost. In addition to this, adding extensions will give your ad more real estate on a search listing page. But this doesn’t mean just adding extensions for the sake of it. Always make sure your messaging is relevant, direct and there for a reason.

Good luck and we can’t wait to see the results!

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