Sitelinks are a
powerful way to obtaining the SERPs (search engine results pages), increase
trust and direct targeted traffic to your site’s internal pages. But what if
you don’t have sitelinks? How do you get them?
Sitelinks are a listing
format in the SERPs that show a website’s main page as well as several targeted
internal links indented below the main entry, and organized into two columns.
In the diagram below, (1) indicates the main page listing, and (2) indicate the
internal site links:
Here is a screenshot of
a SERP displaying sitelinks for Relief India.
Sitelinks only display
for branded or navigational queries. For example, when users search for “Relief
India,” they are probably trying to get to www.reliefindiatrust.org. Because
Google algorithmically conclude this, they deliver not only www.reliefindiatrust.org
as the main result, but also additional options that point users to internal
pages.
Why
are Google sitelinks important?
Beyond just timeliness
and relevance, sitelinks can improve your website in the following ways:
- Establish brand reputation
- Increase trust
- Cover more SERP space
- Increase CTR
- Shorten the conversion funnel
- Improve the strength of internal pages
There
is no form or coding that will produce sitelink listings.
It is not possible to
simply create sitelinks. Here’s why:
1. Sitelinks
are automated. There is no Google-given process for
creating sitelinks. You don’t get to impose what links are featured and when.
You can, however, indicate that a sitelink is not important or relevant by demoting
it.
2. Sitelinks
are created through website best practices. The process of
creating sitelinks may sound like website development 101. That’s because the
process of creating sitelinks is simply about following industry-standard
practices in the creation and development of a site.
3. Google
doesn’t tell you how to create sitelinks. In Google’s
support page for sitelinks, they do not explain how to generate
sitelinks on your own site, other than to mention that “at the moment,
sitelinks are automated.” Sitelinks, like most of the search engine world, are
dominated by the algorithm.
Thus, creating
sitelinks is about learning from the algorithm’s behavior, following best
practices and hoping for the best results.
Getting
Google Sitelinks: A Step-by-Step Guide
Even though you can’t
actually use a plugin, wizard or tool to create sitelinks, you can follow a
process that increases your likelihood of having sitelinks. Here are the steps
you should follow.
1.
Use a unique brand name.
At the core, sitelinks
depend upon your choice in the naming of your business or website. Your site
will not rank for navigational search unless it has something that
differentiates it from generic head terms or common queries.
In several rare cases,
brand names will gain first-page results with sitemaps. Apple is a good
example. Based on user intent and behavior, Google knows that most queries
containing the single word “apple” are queries actually searching for Apple the
company. That’s why you see this in the SERPs when you type in “apple”:
By contrast, if your site is called “The Hardware
Store” or “The Ice Cream Shop” it’s probably not going gain first page results,
except for localized search.
2.
Create a clear site hierarchy and structure.
Websites with a clear
hierarchy are easy to crawl, easy to navigate and much more likely to get
sitelinks. When you develop your site navigation, make sure that it possesses a
clear and logical sequence.
Your navigation bar
will be the main way to display your site structure. Here’s how
Google explains:
All sites have a home
or "root" page. It’s usually the most visited page on a site and the
starting place of navigation for visitors. From the home page, help visitors
find other pages on your site by creating a navigation bar. A good navigation
bar calls out important sections of your site, is clear about where it’ll take
visitors, and follows a logical structure. Intuitive and organized navigational
categories include ‘Home’, ‘News’, and ‘Contact Us.’ You can place the
navigation bar on the top or side of each page for easy access.
In order to enhance the
crawling of your website, also create a sitemap. Not only does this facilitate
crawling, but it also helps Google
to “increase...coverage of your webpages.” By building out your sitemap.xml in
an accurate and comprehensive way, you will be able to increase the likelihood
of more targeted and numerous sitelinks.
4.
Create useful, relevant and information-rich content.
Everything depends upon
content. Google’s goal in providing sitelinks is to give users the most
relevant information. There can only be relevant information where there is
sufficient content. All of your pages need to have content, and lots of it.
Sometimes, websites
have skimpy content on the main navigational pages. This is a mistake. By
featuring plenty of solid content on these pages, you’ll improve SEO on many
fronts, including having the right sitelinks.
5.
Use internal text linking.
How does the algorithm
know which pages to display as sitelinks? Much of it seems to depend on
internal linking. The best types of links are text links as opposed to image
links. Some websites use images as the navigation buttons. For example, a
clickable jpg. image that says “home” or “contact us.” Buttons like these are
not the best way to create internal linking, especially for navigational menus.
Instead, use normal text links.
The links that I’m
referring to are, of course, navigational links. But you should also be doing
internal linking throughout your website’s content. A strong internal linking
strategy means that you are creating links to deep pages using natural anchor
text.
6.
Develop accurate page titles.
The most important SEO
feature of any page is the page title. Google depends on these titles to
provide sitelink information. The simple point to keep in mind here is that the
page titles should be descriptive of the pages themselves.
7.
Gain traffic and be patient.
In a video from
Google’s Matt Cutts, he explained that you must “be patient.” He also remarked
that “enough people [need to] know about your website”, and “people [need to]
to find out about your website.” This suggests that Google’s algorithm awards
sitelinks based on sufficient amount of traffic.
8.
Be No. 1.
The only websites that
receive sitelinks are those that are already number one in the SERPs. There’s
just no such thing as a number two position SERP entry that has sitelinks. You
must be No. 1.
It’s difficult to rank
No. 1 for head term queries, such as “SEO” or “Content marketing.” It can even
be challenging to gain rank for longtail queries such as “how to start a
content marketing campaign,” or “how to safely guest blog.” But the easiest
terms to rank for are branded terms -- your company name, URL or brand.
Assuming you have a
unique brand or company name, your chance of being No. 1 for branded or
navigational searches is very high. Therefore, your chance at having sitelinks
is high, too.
Conclusion
Sitelinks will truly
improve your traffic, reputation, and CTRs. Getting sitelinks isn’t a result of
luck, but of website and SEO best practices. Follow these steps, mix in a
little patience, and you’ll start seeing sitelinks soon enough.
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