AdWords: Callout vs Sitelink Extensions Explained

Callout vs Sitelink: Callouts are features of Adwords and they include review extensions, call extensions, sitelink extensions, review extensions, callout extensions and location extensions.

Sitelinks are added extensions on your Adwords campaign to link users to different pages of your website.

You may think that callout extensions and Sitelinks are the same thing but they are different.

Both Sitelinks and callout extensions are texts that may be added to your ad campaign if it appears in one of the top spots on the search results page.

Callout vs Sitelink: How Callouts Work

These are basically just text blurbs that feature offers or benefits that you are giving to your audience.

They can only be a maximum of 25 characters but it is recommended that you keep your callouts within a range of 12-15 characters so as to get more callouts displayed in each ad.

You can assign the callouts at the ad group level and then set them to be device specific and finally schedule them to appear at specific times.

Callouts and all other Ad extensions are selectively displayed by Google and mostly when your Ad appears at the top of the search page results.

Google does not charge advertisers extra for displaying callouts but they do bring about increased click-through rates that lower CPC and create more opportunities for conversion.

Callout vs Sitelink: Differences

The following are some of the things that set Sitelinks and callouts apart.

• Sitelinks contain a link while callouts are just text

Since Sitelinks contain links they appear in blue while the callouts remain grey as they are just text and don’t contain links.

• Sitelinks require a relevant destination URL that’s different from your ad’s destination URL.

This is a very interesting bit about Sitelinks. In order for you to use Sitelinks you have to ensure that you use a link that is different to your ad’s destination URL.

For example if your company is selling uniforms in your ad, you may choose to ad Sitelinks for school uniforms, overalls, or shoes.

You should just make sure that the links you use make sense and that they add value to your ad instead of taking away value from your copy and advert.

If you are a B2B advertiser then Sitelinks would not be the way to go as they offer quite a lot of challenge.

Callout are just text and you can basically say anything you want though you should consider the callouts to be part of your ad copy and ensure they are relevant.

• Callouts are basically use to tell visitors about the offers that a company has while Sitelinks send visitors to pages where they can get assistance with whatever they are looking for.

Callout vs Sitelink: When To Use Site Links

The best thing about using Sitelinks is that they expand the size of your ad significantly.

This helps to make your ads more noticeable on the search engine results page and thus can make your business look prominent when compared with other sites that don’t have Sitelinks.

If you have several different web pages that users may be interested in you should invest in the creation of site links. This will really help you to promote different products or services.

Callout vs Sitelink: When to Use Callouts

Callouts are highly recommended if you want to highlight specific features and benefits that your business has to offer.

Callouts are different from Sitelinks in the sense that you cannot click them separately. When a user clicks on a callout they will be taken to the landing page for the ad in which the callout has been placed.

They can be considered as a way to get more information into your Ad. You can use your callout extension to enhance the message contained in your ad text.

It is wise to highlight the major benefits that are related to your brand, warranties, shipping etc. in your callout extension text.

Callout vs Sitelink: What to Use

You should first evaluate your advertising campaign and the goals you had set for it before you make a choice on whether to use callouts or Sitelinks.

Sitelinks are great for sending people to your “about us” and “careers” pages but what you should want is for people to actually click on your advertisement because you are paying for every click whether it on the actual advert or on one of the Sitelinks.

You should aim to send your traffic to pages that actually lead to conversions. The Sitelinks in the example given above are good as they actually add value to the conversions for the advertiser of the brand.

Callouts on the other hand are very appropriate and effective for B2B advertisers who don’t have the options for great Sitelinks.

They are also great for addend texts that you would like to include in your ad but you don’t want to link to. The following are examples of such texts:

• Additional info about your brand: who it benefits the most, what problems it solves etc

• Company/brand slogans

• Extra information about the company like the number of years it has been in business etc.

• Any other information that is not contained in its own landing page

Slogans are very important things to place in your callouts as very many internet users and consumers get attached to them and also to taglines.

When using slogans in your callouts you may be taking very many characters which are valuable from the benefits and Calls to action contained in your ad copy.

Callout vs Sitelink: How to Use Each Properly

Let us look at the two examples we have given you above. The callouts used in the example from EAS ad are not effective and they do not make a lot of sense.

They tell people to join the EAS team but don’t tell them how or even provide a link they can follow to take this particular action.

The EAS ad does not provide user with a link to the coupons or custom workout plans that they talk about in the ad.

This makes this an ad copy that makes very many empty promises as they cannot deliver to their users and provide a very poor user experience for their prospects.

The other example from the GNC ad shows how to use callouts correctly. Their callouts are all limited to 25 characters.

They creatively split their slogan which says “Quality Life-Quality Products” into two callouts which is a cleaver way to ensure that they stay within the limits of characters set by Google.

Not sure how to callout? These landing pages are exactly what you need

Conclusion

Using callouts and Sitelinks is a great and creative way to stand out from your competitors.

They help to increase the number of click-through rates that your website receives which goes a long way in increasing the number of conversions that your company receives.

They will also help you brand to gain credibility in the eyes of users who will pick your sites instead of those of your competitors which don’t have callouts or Sitelinks.

For best results you should use Sitelinks and callouts together so they can be more effective.

If you are an online advertiser and you have not yet embraced the use of callouts and Sitelinks in your ad start now.