Google Sitelinks are those extra links that often appear (sometimes) under the top search in Google and link to pages deeper in the site. These are awesome when you get them as I have seen around 20% lift in click throughs when I had them with newhomes.com.
They look like this:
google sitelinks! Very Nice
Previously, Google Sitelinks were only appearing for the top listing. But Google recently expanded Sitelinks to occasionally appear for multiple listings in the search results, regardless of rank position.
There is no guarantee for ensuring your listing gets Google Sitelinks and nobody has identified why and when you get them. Google generates the Sitelinks automatically based on a their algorithm that attempts to determine how useful those Sitelinks will actually be to users.
There are three ways to increase your odds for getting Google Sitelinks on your listings.
- Sitelinks are seen only on listings for either homepages or the main page of a subdomain. I have NEVER seen or know of Sitelinks to your internal page listings.
- Sitelinks are largely based on keyword-rich anchor text link from the homepage, plus many other internal links from throughout the site, are the ones most likely to be included as Sitelinks. Again the screenshot above shows that I have them but as you go to newhomes.com you will see the anchor text that says “georgia new homes”. I used that anchor text throughout the site.
- While you tell Google which pages to list as Sitelinks, you can tell them which pages not to list if you have a Google account and Google Webmaster Tools configured to your site. Just login to your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and go to the sitelinks section.
Just remember Google Sitelinks vary with the user’s query. So sometimes they will be there for one keyword and other times they don’t. Fun huh? An awesome thing Google gives you but you can’t controll really any aspects of it! Anyhow when you get them you get that nice boost in traffic.
