Google is always adding or changing something and for the casual user most of the changes go unnoticed. However, the advertisers, webmasters and business owners are always trying to find a secret tip or magic bullet to give them an advantage over the competition. Google’s advertising program Adwords, has made many changes in 2011, but one change that has went under the radar is extended headlines.
These longer headlines are important to adwords users because the headline is the most critical part of any ad, and a longer headline is going to draw more attention and hopefully more clicks. Increasing the click-through-rate will help improve your quality score and decrease the cost per click. While this is far from a magic bullet, the advertisers that take advantage of this updated feature will definitely have a slight edge on the competition.
What are Adwords Extended Headlines?
In a traditional adwords ad there can only be 25 characters in the headline and 35 characters in each of the two description lines totaling 70 characters. Adwords extended headlines take your first description line and add it to the main headline giving you a much longer and noticeable headline.
These extended headlines look like billboards compared to the traditional adwords ad shown on the right side of the image above.
How can you take advantage of this?
The longer headlines are only awarded to the advertisers in the premium spots or the top 3 positions above the organic search results. This means that you need to have a well-structured campaign with tightly themed ad groups and great ads. This will be the hard part for most advertisers. The good news is once you get your ad to start showing up in the premium spots it’s pretty easy to get the extended headline. You simply need to use a complete sentence in the first description line. In the image above, the third ad is in a premium spot and used proper punctuation. As you can see the headline is longer than the other premium ads and much longer than the traditional ads to the right.
An extended headline is an easy way to stand out and draw attention to your brand and may just give you the edge you need to get the searcher to click on your ad. If you need assistance with improving the rest of your adwords campaign and building a dominating presence online, contact us to get started.
