[Search Engine Marketing] 02. Text Ads @ Google

Ad extensions: 
Enhance your Google Search Ads with additional, relevant information and give people reasons to check out your business.

• Manual: the extensions that you can manually set up on the account, campaign or ad level. 
• Automatic: the extensions that Google will automatically generate. 

No control which and when Google will show one or multiple extensions with your ad.
AdWords will select which extensions and how many appear in response to each individual search query on Google. Sometimes your ad will be shown with multiple extensions, sometimes without any.

There are four main components of a Text Ad:

- Two Headline Fields (Headline 1, Headline 2)
- Description Field
- Two Path Fields
- Final URL field

PC
- site links (up to 10)
- callouts (up to 4)
- structured snippets: highlight aspects of your business that fit into categories predefined by Google such as brands, destinations, styles or types.
- ratings



















Mobile
- location
- call/ message
- price (carousel up to 8)
- app extensions (install button to app installation)

[Text Ad Best Practices (from Udacity)]
Highlight what makes you unique
When coming up with your headline, think of what makes you stand out from the competition. Your ad will likely be displayed among a few other ads that advertise products similar to yours. Go back to your Value Proposition you created earlier and make sure your potential customers know about what makes your product or service unique.

Include special offers or terms
If you offer free shipping, a money-guarantee, a sale or special offers (e.g. Buy one, get one free or 25% off everything), make sure to include that in your ad description. Calling attention to specific prices or promotions can help influence someone's decision to click on your ad.

Include numbers
Space is limited and numbers catch people’s attention very easily. Do you offer a fixed or low starting price or hourly rate that stands out? Or is your service available 24/7 or within 1 hour? Do you have 1,000 happy customers? Whatever number you can highlight to make your offering more attractive, consider to include it.

Use a call-to-action
Use your ad’s description lines to tell your customers what they can do on your site once they click your ad. Calls to action like a purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up, or get a quote make clear what the next steps are. Your call to action has to be specific to your offer and can’t include the word “click” (such as “click here” or “click now”).

Include testimonials
Did your product or service get a raving review by a trusted source? As we have seen earlier, you can include that review using the review extension, provided you can link to a source that is available online. If not, or if you want to guarantee that the endorsement shows up in your ad, you can include it in your ad description, e.g. “Best Value Flowers” - CBS News.

Create a mobile optimized experience
Especially if you are business with local stores or offices, people seeing your ads on mobile are more likely to want to know where you are or to call you. It’s a good idea to use location extensions and call extensions to show your location and phone number. Also, consider creating ads focusing on people on mobile devices, that link to the mobile-optimized version of your landing page.

Match your ad to your keywords
Try thinking like your customers and imagine what they might search for when seeking your product or services. Include their search terms as keywords in your ad text so that they can easily recognize that you offer exactly what they are searching for. Google also offers a feature called “keyword insertion” that dynamically updates your ad text to include one of your keywords that matches a customer's search terms. This is an advanced feature that requires some careful setup.

Match your ad to your landing page
When someone clicks on the link in your ad they should be taken to a landing page where they can do exactly what your ad promises without. The easier you make it for customers to find what they're looking for, the more likely they are to make a purchase. It’s also a good idea to have the main keywords from your ad prominently appear on your landing page.

Create at least two text ads per Ad Group
You can have more, but two ads to start will help you figure out which messaging resonates with searchers. When you have multiple text ads in an Ad Group, Google rotates the delivery because no more than one ad from your account can show at any one time. But Google, by default, runs the best ad. Said another way, once Google has sufficient data, Google optimizes for clicks. That means that Google shows the best performing ad in your ad group more often.

Do competitive research
To make your ad and offering stand out, it’s helpful to know what other ads potential customers will see next to yours. So, before you write your own ads, search for your most important keywords and have a look at what advertisers and ads you see and think about how you can stand out to your target audience. There are also helpful tools available (e.g. semrush.com) that help you identify your competitor’s major keywords and the ads they are currently running. These tools usually charge you, but often have a free trial version, which can be a great place to start.

[Avoid the most common mistakes]
In order to make sure all AdWords ads are of high quality, every ad must meet certain standards. Learn what those standards are and how to avoid common mistakes next!

Text Ad Common Mistakes
Once you save an ad, Google will evaluate the ad for approval and you will be notified when the ad is approved and ready to go. If you’ve done something Google doesn’t like in your ad, it will disapprove your ad and you have to edit it.

We will help you get your text ads approved by going over the most common mistakes. The majority of mistakes fall into two categories: mistakes with your ad’s copy, and mistakes with your ad’s URL.

Let’s start with your ad’s copy:
Avoid excessive or unconventional capitalization
You are free to capitalize words but stay away from excessive capitalization. For example, Google doesn’t allow ALL CAPS or capitalization within a word (such as SpEcIaL OfFeR).

Only use appropriate punctuation and symbols
You’ll also want to look out for excessive punctuation (“Buy Now!!!!”) and symbols (“Save $$$” or “flowers”). AdWords can disapprove ads with: multiple exclamation points (your ad description can only contain one exclamation point), an exclamation point in your ad's headline, repeated punctuation or symbols (e.g., [][][]), non-standard symbols like bullet points and vertical lines, or symbols or characters that don't match their true meaning, such as using the @-symbol next to the word ‘home’" to mean "at home."

Check your spacing
Make sure that you don’t use any extra spaces between letters or words in your ad’s text, such as f l o w e r s.

Don’t include phone numbers in your ad
Next, make sure you don’t include any phone numbers in your ad headline or description. Instead, use call extensions to include a prominent phone number in your ad. Google doesn’t allow phone numbers in the ad copy because it can’t track someone making a call (and thus can’t charge you for the action).

Make sure your ad copy is clear and describes what you're selling
Your ad can be disapproved if it uses gibberish or random letters, or if your ad’s text and URL don’t match, such as an ad for a clothing store that uses www.udacity.com as the URL.
Now let’s look at common mistakes related to your ad’s URL

Double-check your Display URL
Make sure that the display URL (the URL that people see in your ad) isn't mistyped, doesn't include "http" or "https", and doesn't use non-standard characters like exclamation points.

Make sure to use the same domain
Another common disapproval reason has to do with your URL’s domain. Every website has a domain, for example, udacity.com in udacity.com/courses. All ads within the same Ad Group need to have the same domain. Also, the domains for your ad’s display URL, final URL, and landing page URL need to have the same domain. In other words, the website listed in your ad needs to accurately show which website people will be taken to when they click your ad.