The importance of Display URLs

Google Ad

With a PPC text ad, 4 lines are all you get to make your impression. Yet most people give little thought to the display URL, which is 25% of your ad’s real estate. The display URL should be a major concern when writing your ad. I would venture to say that it’s more important that your description even.

Buy a new domain:
This is one place not to cheap out and try to save a few bucks by using a bad domain name. Go ahead and register a new one, or even multiple new ones to test a new offer. Using an old domain that you had lying around, that kind of fits the offer is a recipe for failure. Besides, 1 conversion could recoup the domain cost for a year.

Buy a good domain:
For some reason I don’t have any trouble finding good domains. I never buy .NETs or .ORGs, only .COMS. I hardly ever use hyphens or weird punctuation either. Remember, you are buying the domain to instill confidence in the searcher, not for SEO purposes. Obviously, the shorter the better, but multiple related words are better than punctuation I find.

Test display URLs

I like to run multiple ad copies in Google with the only difference being the display URLs. I have seen big changes in CTR from various URLs tested. Once you find the best converting URL you can switch everything over to that URL.

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Posted in Adwords, Affiliate Marketing, Pay Per Click, Testing by Chad on 05|23|07
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9 Comments »

Comment by Shivaji
2007-05-24 02:31:17

Good thought on Display Urls. I have never seen before anyone blogged on this angle on display urls. Good to follow. Thank you.

 
Comment by Max
2007-06-08 01:19:32

So are you just parking those domains that you buy and using their display URL while the actual link connects to a completely different content site URL?

 
Comment by tony gee
2007-09-15 18:53:49

Good follow through on the URL display. I need to dig further into the pantry to come up with some more uniques URL content.

 
2008-04-25 16:36:56

[...] PPC to affiliate campaign. I touched on this subject briefly almost a year ago in this post about display urls, but I wanted to expand on that. Your choice of domain names to host your landing pages will have a [...]

 
2008-04-28 05:07:26

[...] PPC to affiliate campaign. I touched on this subject briefly almost a year ago in this post about display urls, but I wanted to expand on that. Your choice of domain names to host your landing pages will have a [...]

 
2008-05-07 00:19:48

[...] PPC to affiliate campaign. I touched on this subject briefly almost a year ago in this post about display urls, but I wanted to expand on that. Your choice of domain names to host your landing pages will have a [...]

 
Comment by Aditya
2009-07-08 08:53:03

Excellent tips! Great stuff on PPC affiliate campaign

 
Comment by Aditya
2009-07-08 08:55:00

You were right when you said “The display URL should be a major concern when writing your ad. I would venture to say that it’s more important that your description even”

 
Comment by Aditya
2009-07-08 08:55:27

Thanks again!

 
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