SmartKeyword gives you some tips to get sitelinks for your site.
Sitelinks can considerably increase your visibility on Google. They guarantee the quality of the results shown by Google and have an impact on your CTR (Click Through Rate).
You can't force Google's algorithm to display sitelinks. If the structure of your site does not allow its algorithms to find good sitelinks or if they are considered irrelevant to the user's search, Google may arbitrarily decide not to show them.
For now, the display of sitelinks is automated, but there are good practices you can put in place to improve the quality of your sitelinks and make sure Google notices them.
What is a sitelink?
They’re links that are meant to help users navigate the site (see official google doc: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334?hl=en).
Google analyzes the links' structure on your site to find "shortcuts" that allow users to save time and quickly find the information they seek.
Here is an example of sitelinks on Google:
You can have up to 6 sitelinks for each query. They are different from Google Ads sitelink extensions which only appear in paid ads. The latter can be set directly on Google Ads, which is not possible for organic sitelinks. They can however help you send signals to Google to boost your organic sitelinks.
Having sitelinks pushes your potential competitors to the bottom of the search page, forcing users to scroll to see other results, which can be a big advantage for you :)
Important: you can no longer delete or demote your sitelinks
Before, Google allowed webmasters to "demote" sitelinks from their Google Search Console account. All you had to do was enter the link you wanted to delete - and that was it.
In 2016, Google announced that they were removing this feature.
How can sitelinks help your site?
- They improve your brand awareness
- They have an impact on your CTR
- They highlight your strategic pages
- They represent a sign of trust from Google towards your site
How to get sitelinks ?
Check that your site is in first position for the query corresponding to your brand name, which is generally the case. Only the pages in first position get sitelinks.
Add structured data to your website: rich snippets or schema.org >>> if you use WordPress, you can install a plugin called Schema Pro (aff) which will manage all of this for you.
Optimize your internal linking to show Google which pages you want to show up in sitelinks: the contact or FAQ/blog pages of your site for example. Make strong internal links to these pages, from the footer for example, so that Google understands that these are the pages that count. Use Fetch to test if Google can crawl and index the important pages of your site.
Avoid linking to your legal notice / T&Cs, as these pages can also appear in sitelink. You can either do javascript obfuscation or have these links only from your homepage: your footer will not contain these links from other pages >>> this is the easiest method because the pages exist and reassure Google that it can see them because they are indexed but have only one internal link.
Check the titles of your pages: Google examines these titles to provide Sitelinks. These titles must be clear and precise enough not to confuse the Google robot: they must be a brief description of the pages themselves.
Take care of the "sitewide" links by going to your Search Console, "Links / Internal Links" section to see what stands out. This must be consistent with what you would like to appear in sitelinks. If we take the example of SmartKeyword, we will have this type of links that are displayed:
Add an anchor text on internal links with an "alt" text that is both informative, compact and not repetitive
Link to your blog from your site and vice versa in order to indicate the importance of your blog to Google. This allows Google to see that these two sites are well linked and belong to the same business.
Link from your homepage (if possible) to your top articles to boost the SEO juice and thus the weight of these pages.
However, also make sure that all SEO best practices are already in place on your site:
The structure and hierarchy of your site should be as clear and logical as possible, such as: Home > shoes > women's shoes > red heels
Your navigation menu should include the most important categories
Meta descriptions, title tags and alt text should be relevant and accurate throughout your site.
Avoid slim and insubstantial content and/or duplicate content.
Check your site's speed and page load time.
Optimize the mobile site to try to get sitelinks on mobile search as well.
Going further
You can add links directly from the top navigation menu if functionally (in terms of UX and feasibility) this is not a problem. In SEO, links from the top often have a little more weight than those from the footer.
However, the SEO value of sitelinks is not enough for you to decide to completely change your menu. So only do it if it makes sense!
>>> If you hesitate, in any case we advise you to put the links directly in the footer, it's the easiest quick win compared to the javascript obfuscation above! If you work on a Wordpress CMS it will be even easier.
You can also add a sitemap.xml file to your Google Search Console account to give Google the structure of your site, with your most important pages. This "sitemap" will help Google better crawl your site.
Once these modifications are in place, Google may take 2 to 3 weeks to take into account the links from the footer and display the sitelinks (if it deems them useful).
It's up to you :)
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