In putting together a recent presentation on Mobile Search Marketing for SearchFest in Portland, I came to realize that I love mobile ad sitelinks.
Your Search Results Customer Service Rep
When you walk into a Home Depot or another home improvement store, there is someone in an apron waiting to ask you a few questions and direct you to the aisle, shelf or bin you need.
The first question of “Can I help you find something?” let’s you reply “I need a screwdriver”. Then your expert asks you a follow-up question to make your quest more likely to succeed. Maybe it’s “Power or hand tool?” or “Standard or Phillips?”. The point is that a secondary communication takes place further defining your need and where the answer is. This is a real life AdWords sitelink.
Mobile Sitelinks To Clarify, Build Trust, Define and Locate
Sitelinks in paid mobile search ads on Google are able to meet the needs of many users and the best place to start with what sitelinks to create lies within understanding the possible intent of your searcher.
A mobile search for “Minneapolis Hotel” displays a search ad with sitelinks for Most Popular Hotels, to give a user social proof of what other users select, and Budget Hotels for the price driven user. These examples help those looking for a hotel in Minneapolis make a trusted choice or a price driven choice.
A mobile user might search for “Luxury Hotels Minneapolis”. The example below shows that the sitelinks are helping the user by better defining what luxury means to them … is luxury a 5 star hotel or a 4 star hotel?
Let’s include in my night out in downtown Minneapolis that I want to catch a play on short notice. I search ” Theatre Tickets Minneapolis” and the Fitzgerald Theater uses sitelinks to wisely put me onto their Upcoming Events to see what’s on stage and helps me with understanding their seating chart, a likely piece of information I’ll want before purchasing tickets if I already have a show in mind.
Mobile E-commerce & Store Location Sitelinks
Another example is a user searching for “Popular Hoodies” finds a result for Macy’s offering sitelinks of Find A Location to get you into a nearby Macy’s or Sales & Clearance for the deal minded online shopper.
Not all sitelinks are carried out with the users intent though. Searching “Hoodies for Men” gave me an ad from Ralph Lauren that was poorly written but displayed sitelinks for Women and Children. I had already defined Men as my search, but they wasted their sitelinks on categories of hoodies I wasn’t interested in.
Google Enhanced Campaigns Improve Sitelinks
These types of errors should hopefully happen less with sitelinks now enabled at the ad level with Googles new Enhanced Campaigns. Even though the majority opinion of search marketers seems to be negative on Enhanced Campaigns, I do think the added control and reporting of sitelinks is a plus. Many search marketers have shared other positives on sitelinks recently.
I’m hopeful that reporting from Google on what sitelinks are clicked and the result of that user is as granular as possible to help search marketers create better sitelinks to help searchers find the best results. I really think that sitelinks’ success hinges upon users getting the right sitelink options and forming a trust in clicking them over the ad headline.
While meeting the searcher’s intent with your sitelinks is the top benefit in my opinion, also consider that your sitelinks save users clicks, give you more characters to market with and help your ad occupy more screen space.
I’m well aware I might be over focusing on this aspect of mobile search marketing, but I’m OK with it. I love mobile sitelinks and I’m proud to shout blog it.