Google Sitelinks – How to Get Them for Your Blog

February 21, 2012

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Google Sitelinks is additional links which Google puts under your main link in search results, if they think it may be important to the users.

If you are unsure about it then check the below screenshot for Makewebworld Sitelinks.

Google Sitelinks can help sites in getting extra traffic by showing extra information to the users. It can also project you as an authority for that keyword, getting so many links for an query means you hold good content for that keyword and Google recognizes it.

All in all, its an indication that your SEO efforts are going in right direction.

But what if after all of your efforts, you are still not getting the Google sitelinks. Don’t worry you do not have control on them, it will be created by Google when they think it’s appropriate.

But here are some tips which can give indication to Google that your site is ready for it:

1. Home Page SEO

This is one of the most important thing for Sitelinks, Google can fill the other links from your posts but it can’t fill the homepage for you.

If your homepage SEO is not correct, means you do not have meta description, title etc for your home page than you might not get the sitelinks. This is the precise reason I like Thesis Theme as it makes it really easy to update those details.

If you are using Thesis theme than you can update the details under Thesis Site Option. There is a section of Home page SEO, you can add the details and you are done.

2. Site Structure

Site structure is another thing which can setup Google Sitelinks for you. Google needs to understand your site structure and important pages for your sites.

A good way to do that is, to draw your sitemap for yourself, which can help you find any loose end. Once your draw your sitemap you will find that which pages are not required on blog, or which category should actually be tags etc.

While drawing the site structure, you need to keep your goal in mind. You need to put emphasis on what are the offerings for your readers.

A good way to create a structure is by starting from top, like start with your blog name and then try to list what are the objectives you try to achieve. These objectives can be high level categories for you and if you want to break it down more then you can get the lower level categories also.

3. Clear Navigation links for Google Sitelinks

Once your home page and site structure is done, its time to tell Google about your site structure. A clear Navigation panel can does that work for you.

You should use your navigation panel to tell people and search engine about your content. Do not use just the category names in navigation panel, try to elaborate on them, use phrases and link them to your categories.

This is one of the good way to tell Google about your content topics so that they can understand and create additional links for Google Sitelinks. You should also include important pages in the navigation panel.

4. On-Page SEO for Post and Pages

On-Page SEO is another very important for Google Sitelinks. On page SEO tells Google about your keywords and content topics, based on that Google can decide to include them in the search results.

You just need to follow some guidelines to do the on page SEO and there are many tools available to help you like Seopressor.

For further information, you can check the list of my useful WordPress resources.

5. Promotion of your Important Pages

Once you have everything setup then you need to wait for Google to recognize and generate Google Sitelinks for your site. One thing which needs additional awareness is Google ranks the pages based on on-page and off-page SEO basis. SO if your two pages are optimized for same keyword, then off-page SEO plays it parts.

So you need to make sure that you promote you important pages and generate some backlinks for them.

Google does not reject well optimized sites, so once your optimization is done, you should get Google Sitelinks soon enough.

This approach has another benefit as your site is optimized for SEO, which can increase your rankings in SERP’s. So go and play around to get more juice from SERP’s and Google Sitelinks.

37 COMMENTS

Anil Agarwal October 2, 2012 at 11:54 PM

Sanjeev, I think domain age also has something about getting sitelinks for a domain from Google. Have never noticed a website getting these special links from Google even if they are well optimized. Minimum time a normal website in getting sitelinks is 6 months.
suven September 27, 2012 at 5:55 PM

Hi friends,

i am using thesis theme n 4 days back i removed multimedia box from it and yesterday my site links disappeared. i don’t know whats causing this problem but i know i will get them back soon.

Thanks for this post.
ravi badoni June 20, 2012 at 6:20 PM

how many backlinks should we make to get sitelinks for our site??
- Sanjeev June 20, 2012 at 10:10 PM
  
  It’s more of dependent on your site structure rather than backlinks…if your site structure is defined and you have properly SEOed page than you should get it….to include important pages you need to create internal links to them so Google can understand it…
Hari Narayan June 12, 2012 at 10:21 AM

Recently, I got google sitelinks for my blog, but after I changed the theme of my blog , sitelinks suddenly disappeared. So i was thinking why , and finally got the answer here. Thanks for the article!
Amit Shaw May 7, 2012 at 8:05 PM

Nice post sanjeev. I can see my pages(About us, Contact Us etc ) on site link with some article link. Is it okay or not?
- Sanjeev May 7, 2012 at 9:31 PM
  
  As long as you want to promote those pages its ok, remember people will tend to click more on those links. So if you want to promote some other pages you can put a request to demote some links…
Brain April 5, 2012 at 11:03 AM

Google sitelinks is good for business blog or website to show attractive results to users who searches on Google. Here, some information does not provide as tell Google for website. For this create Google webmaster account, enter blog website URL and then put Google verification code into you Blog or website to get effects.
- Sanjeev April 5, 2012 at 11:23 AM
  
  You are right, its trivial to create an account on webmaster tool and add your site to it. This is so basic that I missed it mentioning in the post. Thanks for bringing it up.
Social media advertising March 20, 2012 at 5:26 PM

Sitelink are great to increase your CTR and the tips which you shared through this blog post is informative. But I am afraid if the example of sitelink which gave is proper or not.
- Sanjeev March 20, 2012 at 6:01 PM
  
  Why do you feel that the example is not appropriate? This is how a sitelink looks like, though it is not generated based on any major keyword but still a valid sitelink.
John March 12, 2012 at 4:17 PM

I have gone through various posts on this particular issue of sitelink and by going through them I had an rough idea about how these sitelinks are created. But guess what those information was not at all complete. Because most of those posts emphasized on navigation, no where they mentioned about the relative SEO score which you did very correctly.
- Sanjeev March 12, 2012 at 4:40 PM
  
  Thanks John, relative SEO score is a good measure for sitelinks, internal navigation gives good emphasis on important pages but its the SEO score which decide the inclusion in sitelink.
Nishadha March 7, 2012 at 12:27 PM

Also you have some control of the links that appear in site links, if you don’t wont some link to appear then you can specify that in Google webmaster tool, have to admit having site links brings good value in search results.
- Sanjeev March 7, 2012 at 12:47 PM
  
  Yes, we do have some control at least in terms of demoting the links, so a good reason to keep an eye on sitelinks and correcting them if required.
Juphet Mislang March 5, 2012 at 9:32 AM

Is it possible to use sitelinks to free hosted sites? Like mine?
- Sanjeev March 5, 2012 at 12:24 PM
  
  Hi Juphet, Yes it is possible. The idea is to give users more related options and if the site is correctly setup with good navigation options than it can happen.
  - Juphet Mislang March 12, 2012 at 3:09 PM
    
    Thanks Sanjeev for responding! Question is where am i going to change the options? Did my question make sense? Anyway thanks again Sanjeev, I appreciate your responce. 😀
    - Sanjeev March 12, 2012 at 4:20 PM
      
      You do not have to set any option for that, Google will automatically build sitelinks for your site if the deemed appropriate. Your should should have a proper SEO structure, though I agree that free WordPress account does not give much options.
issam March 4, 2012 at 1:20 AM

Thanks Sanjeev for this useful article
- Ziesha April 26, 2012 at 10:31 AM
  
  Well accordingly I also want to say Thanks to Sanjeev as these points helped me to up brings my site ranks too but I need to know one thing that why internal links are so important ?
  - Sanjeev April 26, 2012 at 7:02 PM
    
    Thanks Ziesha, Glad this post help you. Internal links are really important to tell Google which content you deemed important and for what context..
khaja moin February 29, 2012 at 11:55 AM

Giving internal links to can help you to get into google site links easily…
- Sanjeev February 29, 2012 at 3:23 PM
  
  Yes, any promotion of posts is an indication to Google for its importance and internal linking is a good way to let Google and readers know about the content.
Reece Jordan February 29, 2012 at 12:28 AM

If you don’t quite have the right links showing up in your google sitelinks results, can you just build more links and authority to the important pages and then will Google change the sitelinks accordingly?
- Sanjeev February 29, 2012 at 9:52 AM
  
  Yes, Also if you want to remove some links from your sitelinks you can demote them through Google Webmaster Tool. You just need to submit the url which you want to demote.
Harsh Agrawal February 24, 2012 at 6:35 AM

Nice post and from my experience your links in navbar and below post makes the huge difference..usually your most traffic post or linked post ..along with most interlinked post/pages appears here..!!
- Sanjeev February 24, 2012 at 8:06 AM
  
  Yes, Nav bar and interlinking is really important to show your important pages and Google does take notice of that.
Paul Salmon February 23, 2012 at 8:39 PM

I remember when Google introduced SiteLinks. Back then it was much harder for Google to display additional links under the main URL of your site. Now it seems much easier, provided you have properly structured your site.
- Sanjeev February 23, 2012 at 9:14 PM
  
  I agree a good structured site and a good SEO option can make it little easy, but still a lot depends on Google as they decide when they will display it.
GelliAnn February 23, 2012 at 6:31 AM

Now I get to be more familair with Google Sitelinks…Thanks for the information you have provided here then…
- Sanjeev February 23, 2012 at 8:36 AM
  
  Thanks Ann, hope it will help in getting sitelinks for your site.
John Cooper February 23, 2012 at 12:33 AM

I’m glad Google is widening the net when it comes to sitelinks. I think a lot of webmasters wish they were given more control in Webmaster Tools in regards to choosing which pages (or what type of links) show up under their sitelinks profile
- Sanjeev February 23, 2012 at 8:35 AM
  
  Ohh I agree, the only control we have now is that we can request to demote any link. so if there is something which you don’t want to show you can demote and it will not be shown in sitelinks. But greater control would be better…
Rick Castro February 22, 2012 at 12:27 PM

Okay, clearly this is a good idea. My boss did tell me about the one and he said I should apply it to the website that I manage,
Question is I do not know how to start. What you have said Sanjeev is for wordpress platform right, but what if the website the I’m optimizing do not use wordpress. Note, I do not know what platform it is using. Can you help me with this? Thanks! Will wait for your response.
- Sanjeev February 22, 2012 at 12:58 PM
  
  Rick the idea is in general, SEO specification will remain same for any site. Your home page and important pages should have good SEO and meta descriptions, and good off-page seo.
  Execution could vary, you need to see how you can do SEO for your platform, WordPress does have some good SEO friendly themes and plugins.
  - Rick Castro February 23, 2012 at 8:34 AM
    
    Thanks Sanjeev for the answer.. Well, someone told me that I have to upload the file. Sadly, I do not have all the access on the website I manage. I only so off page and minor on page. Well, because my workmate already did the onpage last year and just sometimes check the errors and create recommendation about it. Anyway, thanks Sanjeev for replying! 🙂 Appreciated! God Bless and more power.