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Google Adwords Basic's Blog: Display URL’s

Picture of Honcho Honcho : Feb 25, 2011 11:01:37 AM

Image courtesy of Stuart Brown, stu.rtbrown.org

Welcome to the latest edition of the Google Adwords Basics Blog. In this blog I will express the importance of using targeted display URL’s. Display URL’s are very important but often overlooked. Slight variations in the display URL can make all the difference between whether a user clicks on your site and potentially buys your products. iThinkMedia recently took over an account previously run by another large agency to which I was very surprised to see that they were using the same generic display URL for all of their ad-copy, throughout the account www.madeupcompany.co.uk (to save face and copyright I have used an example). Obviously this allowed for some quick win improvements to CTR (click through rate) Targeting display URLs to a collection of related search terms provides Search Engine users with reassurance that an advert will take them to a relevant landing page. This in turn will increase CTR and therefore drive more traffic to your website. An example of more targeted display URLs would be: “ www.madeupcompany.co.uk/football” or www.madeupcompany.co.uk/cricket By adding /football or /cricket to the display URL the advert highlights to a Search Engine user that this advert will take you to a related page. If the website is about sport in general then using the domain name alone may indicate to the user that on clicking the advert they will have to navigate their own way to the desired content from the home page. Making these types of changes gives users more of an idea about what they are expecting to see when they click on your ad. Conversion rates will also improve as people who may have previously clicked your ad expecting something else will now know exactly what you are advertising. This will also save you money which we know is pretty crucial when working within a budget. The more targeted you make your display URL and indeed your entire ad, you may notice a slight decrease in CTR but Conversion rate will improve drastically. An example of a very targeted display URL would be: “www.example.co.uk/adidas_trainers” If you were still targeting the term “trainers” then you would limit the number or people who would click on your ad, but you will improve conversion rate as only people looking for Adidas trainers will click on your ad. Stay tuned for more PPC Blogs. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section or follow me on twitter @PhilStevensPPC