There are many dynamics that affect what appears on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
The current way Google describes search results, SERPs can include text results, visual results, rich elements, search capabilities, and more.
The more space and real estate you can own in the SERPs, the more likely you are to get the clicks and website traffic you need from your target audience.
An important and often overlooked aspect of SERPs, and an opportunity to gain visibility, is through sitelinks.
What are sitelinks
Sitelinks are additional links or navigational elements for specific websites or domains that appear in SERPs alongside text or ad results.
In a broader sense, they are navigational in nature, allowing searchers to see more of how they click on your site.
In the current era of context-focused SEO and an era focused on user engagement and experience (which I fully accept and agree with), Sitelinks is not just about owning real estate. A great way to get important clicks and keep users on your site. land on your site.
In organic search, Google’s algorithm only shows sitelinks for pages that it determines are relevant and useful to users.
One of the benefits of sitelinks is that they can improve your click-through rate (CTR). This is because search result text takes up more real estate on his SERP. In doing so, they can push other results down the crease or out of sight.
Sitelinks can improve the visibility of internal pages. A poorly performing page can improve its traffic if it appears as a sitelink on a more popular page.
Sitelinks to organic search results and paid ads are important opportunities that are often overlooked.
CTR, user retention, and matching content that users want from us are essential to success in SERPs.
Sitelinks become part of making more use of positive rankings, providing more quality opportunities for searchers.
Types of sitelinks
There are several types of common sitelinks.
- Inline sitelink.
- An expanded sitelink group.
- search box.
- Paid sitelinks.
inline sitelink
Inline sitelinks typically appear as four links in a horizontal row below the primary search results.
Google screenshot, December 2022Expanded sitelink
The first version that comes to mind, like mine, is the expanded sitelink group.
These occupy the most space in the SERP and appear as a list below the main text (or organic) results. is also included.
Google screenshot, December 2022search box sitelink
Search Box Sitelinks are simple search boxes that appear below the main text results. Give users direct access to your site’s search engine.
Google screenshot, December 2022paid site link
These are associated with ads and are the easiest for the site owner to control.
Sitelinks can be created and added to relevant campaigns and ad groups to appear below text ad links and be primarily copied.
Google screenshot, December 2022Note that we’ve also seen other types of sitelinks in short-lived instances. A recent example was a sideways swipeable carousel of sitelinks on mobile, but this is not active or It looks like it is no longer wild.
How to get sitelinks
There is no way to tell Google to display sitelinks or add or remove them directly.
However, there are specific ways to take actions to implement best practices and indirectly capture and manage them.
Text Link Sitelink Best Practices
For organic opportunities, best practices for displaying sitelinks below text results start with using informative, relevant, and concise page titles and headings on your website.
You also need a site structure that users and bots can navigate efficiently.
This means making sure that important and relevant pages are linked from your page. Breadcrumbs also help Google understand your site’s structure, relationships between pages, and overall hierarchy.
Concise and relevant anchor link text is also an important part of your site and effort.
Other sitelink types
If you’re advertising with Google Ads, you can easily get sitelinks by adding them to your ad groups and campaigns.
A sitelinks search box could be an attractive and useful tool for your site as well.
To display a sitelinks search box in text search results, your site must have a functional search engine that directs user queries to search results pages. We also need to add his WebSite structured data to the homepage defining the SearchAction.
How to remove the sitelinks search box
Conversely, to remove the sitelinks search box from your site, simply add the following meta tag to your homepage:
<meta name="google" content="nositelinkssearchbox">
management
If a page you don’t want is showing up as a sitelink, consider whether the entire page should be indexed.
If it should be indexed but not relevant to the resulting page, consider how it is linked on the page.
Indexing and physical linking give you some control over which pages that don’t belong to the sitelink or are irrelevant are excluded from the sitelink.
There used to be tools within Google Webmaster Tools (the predecessor to Google Search Console) that allowed you to remove specific sitelinks, but those controls are gone. Your best bet is to control which links are actually on your site and how they appear to users and search engines.
Conclusion
Having as much real estate in the SERPs of organic search results as possible is an important SEO goal and can positively impact impressions and clicks to your site.
With so many other competing types of non-organic content in SERPs, you want as much visibility and control as possible.
Sitelinks can provide more space, draw users deeper into your site, and give searchers more context before they enter your site.
Other resources:
Featured Image: MaximP/Shutterstock
