MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Google Adwords rewards high-performing ads with spe­cial place­ment above search results. Take a look at the screen­shot below. Lower per­form­ing ads show on the right and top per­form­ers show above the search results.

In the screen­shot above you’re look­ing at ads that show for the key­word “speed reading”.

Now here’s what you should know. The way you write the URL for your ad can make a dra­matic dif­fer­ence depend­ing on whether your ad is show­ing on the side or on the top.

When your ad is on the side it’s usu­ally bet­ter to cap­i­tal­ize keyphrases in your URL. In other words

www.SpeedReadingBook.com will usu­ally per­form bet­ter than www.speedreadingbook.com.

But once your ad makes it to the top posi­tion you’re gonna have to change your URL tactics.

Take a closer look at the top posi­tion ads for speed reading.

The first 3 list­ings are ads. The final, fourth list­ing is a search result.

Notice that each of the 3 ads use a dif­fer­ent way of writ­ing the URL?

The first ad is of the type www.url.com.

The sec­ond is url.com

and the third is www.Url.com

The actual search result lists the url as www.url.com

Now remem­ber — the less your ad looks like an ad — the more clicks you get. Take a look at how Google shows urls for search results.
It’s always www.url.com

So if your ad is show­ing above the search results you’ll get sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter click-through-rates by listinng your URLs as www.url.com (As in the first ad).

In our test of two sim­i­lar google ads show­ing in above the search results. The one with www.url.com out­per­formed www.Url.com by a huge mar­gin of 20%.

Nice!

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
• Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap? — Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2008
• What Does Your Order But­ton Say? — August 29th, 2008
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
• Are small busi­nesses drop­ping out of AdWords? — July 23rd, 2008

About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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