How to get Google Sitelinks for your website

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13 Feb, 2008 | Search Engine Optimisation

Google Sitelinks are an enhancement to the their natural search results that can dramatically increase a website's visibility, reputation and provide more traffic. A similiar service is also provide by Microsoft's Live search engine. These Sitelinks are generated automatically by Google and are designed to provide users with more valuable search results.

Here's an example of a Sitelinks listing for one of our clients Cotton On clothing:

On a search for the keywords "Cotton On", below the first search result, we see links to various areas of the Cotton On website. These Sitelinks give the user a better understanding of what the site is about before they visit and also allow the user jump straight to an area of interest such as the Cotton On store locations or Careers information. Unfortunatley for webmasters who are continuing asking "how can i get these links for my website?" only high quality websites seem to get Sitelinks.

So how can i get Sitelinks for my website?

As per usual, most of the Google algorithms including Sitelinks are kept a secret to discourage people from manipulating the rankings. However we can still study examples and try to understand where Sitelinks come from. Fortunately, i've been able to work on a number of sites with Sitelinks and have been able to compile the following list of simularities between the sites:

• The sites always rank #1 on Google for the keyword(s) that generate the Sitelinks
• The websites are correctly optimised for search engines, accessable and contain well structured navigation
• Recieve a fairly high amount of natural search traffic from Google
• Have a high click through rate originating from the search results page
• Contain some useful outbound links
• Refferals (inbound links) come from other high quality sites
• The website is a couple of years old or more

Is this what it takes to get SiteLinks for your site? We can't be too sure exactly what what Google uses to create Sitelinks but none the less everything on the above list is desirable for an online marketing program.

What does Google look for?

Once again, we cannot say with absolute confidence exactly what we need to get Sitelinks, however we can deduce some of the signals by looking at Google's Webmaster Guidelines and by studying the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

The Google Webmaster Guidelines state under the design and content guidelines to "make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links". This is good advice for a number of reasons:

1. A clear navigation hierarchy is good for visitors
2. It helps search engines understand the topic of each page
3. Google can only create sitelinks once it can obtain the meaning of the sub-pages - either by analysis or by observing user behavior

The links contained on Google's search results pages (SERPs) are embeded with tracking information, coupled with the fact that many of Google's users have Google accounts which means that Google can easily record and monitor user behavior over time. This means if too many uses are bouncing back from the search results from a particular website than that would indicate a poor search result for those particular keywords. The bounce rate  of your websites pages can easily be tracked with Google Analytics. Here are a few techniques to help improve a high bounce rate:

• Provide useful and description meta tag content (titles and descriptions) that matches the content on your pages
• Provide useful and relevant content on your webpages
• Well designed/User friendly navigation

A Few things you can do to improve your changes of getting Google Sitelinks

Again we can only make an educated guess, but we should be looking at things that are also good for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and the users experience.

• Create well structured navigation using HTML features like unordered lists and text links.
• Organise the navigation to represent a small number of logical destinations that visitors will choose frequently. Don't cluster up your navigation with too many choices on the main menu - you can also add a second level menu (or drop downs).
• Provide useful titles and META descriptions on the site that can be read by humans, not spammed with keywords and over optimised for search engines.
• Lower your "bounce rate" by providing useful content. Google can tell if a user bounces back to the SERP - this more than likely adversly effects the site's reputation.

How to check if you have Sitelinks using Google Webmaster Tools

If you have Google Webmaster Tools setup for your website, you can easily check to see if any site links appear for your website by click on Links>Sitelinks. If you do not have any Sitelinks the following message will appear:

Bookmark it!

Comments

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1. jono b (31 May, 2008 - 20:53)

Nice article. I was wondering what you think is a good bounce rate? It seems to me 50% is actually pretty good from organic search. What do you say?

2. Ramandeep singh (03 Nov, 2008 - 02:37)

Very good article . I liked it . www.gameprism.com

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