Google’s Ad Sitelinks can help boost your campaign’s performance!  Sonya Wood’s blog post last Friday talked about the beta program Google AdWords has rolled out, called Ad Sitelinks.  With initial tests running on a handful of our clients’ campaigns, early numbers are showing promising results.

The most significant impact in AdWords stats has been on click through rate and conversion rate.  The chart below taken from the Account Snapshot section of AdWords compares November 9 – November 15 when Ad Sitelinks was in place, to the prior date range when additional links were not being used.  While the click through rate (CTR) for this client’s entire campaign portfolio dipped slightly, the campaign utilizing Sitelinks in the ad copy showed an increase over 66%.

Figure A.  All Online Campaigns

Another notable metric that has been impacted is the conversion rate.  Please note the company being featured in this post is an ecommerce website that has historically seen increasing conversion rates throughout the month of November and December.  This is evidenced by Figure A above where we see a 68% lift in conversion rate for the portfolio of campaigns under this account.  This increase was significantly higher for our test campaign utilizing Ad Sitelinks – a stellar 80% lift!

Figure B.  Ad Sitelinks Campaign

Beyond AdWords, we have seen additional positive impact in site usage through Google Analytics.  By providing multiple entry points to the website we have been able to drastically decrease the bounce rate for this campaign – by 49%!  Based on the strong preliminary results yielded by implementing Sitelinks on a single campaign, we have since implemented the option on a number of campaigns within this client’s account.  If your AdWords account has been white listed for this beta opportunity, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of it.

eHow has established themselves as a go-to resource for instructional articles.  According to quantcast, ehow.com is, “a top 50 site that reaches over 16 million U.S. monthly people.”  The library of extensive articles and how to videos is attractive to search engines, and garners top organic positions for eHow.com in the search results.  In addition, eHow does a great job of driving traffic to their site via email re-marketing and social media marketing (sharing / bookmarking widgets).  There are a handful of options for getting more visibility for your ads on eHow.com.
The screen capture below highlights the sponsorship opportunities available on a typical article page.   

Sponsored “text links” provide relevant ads and can use a number of formats including video as shown above.  Google AdSense is clearly a valuable stream of revenue, evident by the Google custom search box at the top and bottom of every page, as well as reserved ad space along the left and right columns and bottom of article text.  The main content on the page also incorporates strategic text links.  When hovered over with a mouse, some links provide organic search results powered by Bing, specific to the linked text.  Others give visitors an advertisement, as displayed below in the link for the text “forms of diabetes”.

eHow provides similar sponsorship opportunities on their How to Video pages.  Pre-roll and post-roll video sponsorship is available, as well as category-specific content advertising.

eHow also appears to work with advertisers on custom offerings, as evidenced by inclusion of a Gillette link in the secondary navigation, highlighted below.

 
Gillette Sponsored link on eHow

For advertisers who are not ready to commit substantial minimum budgets, Google AdWords provides a quick and easy entry.  Being that you set your daily budget and desired cost per click (or cost per impression), it is very manageable via the AdWords interface.  Let’s say you are an ecommerce website selling a niche accessory for cars and trucks.  Here is a 3 step process for targeting specific visitors on ehow.com.

1. Create a Placement Targeted Campaign in Google AdWords for eHow.com only.
2. Add (broad) keywords to help define where your ads will be placed (car repair, truck repair, car stereo installation, etc).
3. Edit Audience Settings to exclude specified age and gender demographics, if desired.

To help ensure success for your new campaign, use ad creative that speaks to your target audience.  Talk to the (male) consumer who is actively researching how to repair, install, etc. a piece of equipment for their vehicle.  eHow accepts all ad formats available via the AdWords interface (text, image, overlay video, flash & rich media), so advertisers can be creative with their ads and even customize color palette and images for a specific placement / website.

So your AdWords campaigns have grown into architectural masterpieces -structured with multiple, tightly-themed ad groups each containing precise keyword lists that have been expanded, scrubbed, and polished over time.  You are rotating 3 or more versions of ad copy concurrently, removing the impression-cannibals and replacing with fresh ads – always aiming to improve upon click through rates.  Now what?

To make even more of an impact, consider layering on Google’s Conversion Optimizer as part of your overall bid strategy.  Conversion Optimizer is a feature provided by Google that allows you to bid using a max CPA (cost per acquisition or lead) strategy.  This setting is applied at the campaign level.  Google will optimize your campaign performance for the best possible ROI.  CPA bids are set, but you are still charged on a per click basis.  The tool calculates a CPC bid, working back from the max amount you are willing to pay for a conversion, and also using historical conversion data to determine the likelihood your ads have to convert. 

Conversion Optimizer should be considered for campaigns:

1. Generating conversions on a regular basis at a similar rate
2. With a Minimum of 30 conversions over the last 30 days (required)
3. 2 weeks minimum recommended conversion tracking history

Be aware that it is possible to exceed your max specified CPA. Changes to your website and ad copy should be made cautiously during the early stage use of Conversion Optimizer.  These types of changes can have a huge impact on your conversion rate.  If the actual conversion rate turns out to be lower than the conversion rate predicted by Conversion Optimizer, your actual CPA may exceed your maximum CPA bid. 

As with any new strategy, tracking results after changing from manual bidding to Conversion Optimizer is critical.  The chart below provides a snapshot comparison of campaign performance for a 10-day timeframe running Conversion Optimizer versus manual bidding. 

If we were measuring success by click through rate or cost per click, our test would appear to be a failure.  However, our goal with this client was to maintain a consistent lead flow at a pre-determined cost per lead.  With the implementation of Conversion Optimizer, we saw just under a $6 decrease in the cost per conversion over the first 10 days of use……translating to 14 additional leads for our client.

Don’t overlook your top campaigns for bid optimization!  While a manual bidding strategy is necessary for establishing strong positions and click through rates, a CPA bid strategy powered by Google’s Conversion Optimizer can be ideal for taking established campaigns to the next level.  Although campaigns may continue to convert at a respectable rate, you may be missing out on volume by not leveraging this free tool.