Editorial Staff
You might be wondering why some websites have some sitelinks showed up when you Google about them.
And then, you might get frustrated why your site does not have one yet.
In this module, we’ll show you exactly everything you need in order to show sitelinks and search box for your website.
What are Sitelinks?
Sitelinks are the links shown below the description of a snippet in the search result that are pointing to other pages on the website.
It created automatically by the Google algorithm based on several factors and shown up when they are useful to the user.
Sitelinks are only shown up when Google are showing the result for the homepage of a website.
It never be any other specific pages except homepage.
Why are Sitelinks Important?
There are numerous advantages you gain if Google decided to show sitelinks on the search result:
1. Increase Branded SERP Real Estate
With sitelinks showed up like this, it improve your coverage in the SERP real estate, taking a big space in the search result.
This way, your brand can ensure that any users that are searching for your brand won’t go click the other search result.
And hence, it boost your click through rate.
2. Signal of Google Trust
In fact, Google does not show sitelinks to all websites.
When it shows the sitelinks when a user is searching for particular brand names, it shows Google trust.
3. Increase CTR on Your Other Internal Link
When sitelinks are shown in your site search result, it also promote your internal pages that are showing in the internal link.
This provide user a better experience to get into important section of a website.
How to Show Sitelinks in Google?
You can’t exactly tell Google which specific pages to be shown as sitelinks and either to show them too.
While it all chosen by the Google algorithm, there are still ways you can do to increase the chance of getting them shown:
Step 1: Ensure to Rank on Your Brand Name
For example, when your brand name is Joe’s Kitchen, you’ll need to ensure that your site is the first result when anyone search for the brand term.
Ranking for your own brand name should not be an issue if your site has been established.
However, this is normally the problem for a new site owner.
Therefore, if your site is just established, focus on the link building and creating useful contents until Google show you first for your brand search result.
Step 2: Site Structure
Site structure is the most important factor when it comes to the sitelinks.
How your sitelinks will appear is depending on your site structure.
When you’re using hierarchy breadcrumb, Google will show the sitelinks based on the top subfolder (usually category).
However, when your specific post does not contained inside any folder, Google will show the sitelinks based on the most popular pages on your site.
Step 3: Optimize for Internal Linking
Googlebot follows link.
When it realize there are huge amount of internal links that are pointing to a specific page, it’s like a signal for Google that the specific page is important.
Hence, there is a high chance that Google will show that page as your sitelink.
Sitelinks Are Shown to an Unwanted Page, How to Deal With That?
In some of the cases, you might found that Google is showing sitelinks for unwanted pages.
In this case, you can tell Google to demote them from your sitelinks by using Google Search Console.
But keep in mind that, this does not guarantee that the page will get demoted from your sitelinks.
It is just a suggestion for Google, so when Google agreed to it then only it will get demoted.
For example, in one of our site, Google shows the “Lying” on one of our sitelinks.
This is coming from our popular tag that named “Lying”, but it looks bad when it show in the sitelinks.
