Previously we already discussed about sitelinks in brief. It was a brief discussion about what is sitelink and is there anyway to get them soon for your own website. Few readers has requested to write in more detail about getting sitelinks fast for site. So, this time, we are getting in to deep about sitelinks. It is advisable for the starters to read that small article before reading this article; it will be rather easy to understand the matter of discussion then for all of you, regardless of the level of your knowledge about SEO. It is now usual to find some related links on the first search result when the user request matches any domain name. These links are called Sitelinks. If you type <span style="background-color: #e9eef3; font-color: #000000 font-size; font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; font-weight: bold; text-shadow: #fff 1px 1px;">Apple.com</span> in Google search, these links will appear in the first result. These are sitelinks:
Even a child can tell, how much iPad, iPhone, Mac is related to Apple! They the are most popular and relevant links from Apple. Sitelinks are a block of 8 links up that appears below the description of some search results (SERP). They first appeared in July 2005. They exist only on the Google search engine and distinguish websites that have links offering directly to sections of the site most visited by Internet users. That said, we do not yet know precisely how Google goes about assigning SiteLinks to a site. We are writing here to discuss an article on SiteLinks and propose some pathways to prepare, obtain and optimize your Sitelinks.
When Sitelinks are displayed?
- Sitelinks displays a maximum block of 8 links
- Sitelinks are shown when they exceed 3 links. In some cases, there may be 1 or 2 links in webmastertools but that does not appear in the results. This is normal because Google requires a minimum of 3 links and a maximum of 8 links.
- Management SiteLinks is fully automated! There is no human intervention.
- Sitelinks displayed when you enter a query in Google that is contained in a domain name. Google must be absolutely sure that the first he offers is the site you want.
- Brand names consistently show Sitelinks. In some cases, brand names can be confusing! Example of Apple , which means “apple fruit”! For a long time this application does not give rise to the displaying Sitelinks for Apple Inc. (U.S.) because the engine did not know what user was really looking for (the company or the fruit). Ambiguity seems now has lifted off and SiteLinks appear systematically.
- Links Sitelinks appear only for the first link on the results page.
- The fact that they appear or not appear to come from two main criteria: relevance and quality of the site structure.
- Sitelinks do not seem to appear for home pages of the sites.
How does Google choose which sitelinks to be included:
Google can communicate enough on the operation of the algorithm siteslink . Nevertheless the analysis of patent filed for SiteLinks and many experiments suggest that sitelinks are defined in terms of user behavior.
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- In fact, appearance of SiteLinks depend on most clicked links and urls of the site.
- Google uses data from the Google Toolbar, Google Analytics and user behavior on search results to define SiteLinks to display.
- In some cases, the links are displayed most clicked links in the SERP because the pages are very well referenced.
- These may include links that are not directly accessible from the homepage. Indeed, in some cases, there may be links to pages deep but are very popular.
- The links included are not necessarily html links. These can be text links, image links (the content of the attribute “alt” then provides the link text) or javascript links.
- The popular PageRank does not fit into the algorithm for calculating the SiteLinks since sitelinks are seen for some sites with low page rank (2 / 10). Increasing your page rank is not necessarily a requirement to obtain SiteLinks, neither good SERP.
- It seems that Google takes into account information included in the HTML of the homepage and only that enjoys the Sitelinks.
Management of sitelinks:
It is now possible to manage SiteLinks obtained in the Google webmaster tools.
Indeed in the site links, we can see SiteLinks obtained.
It also can block the display of links if you consider they are not appropriate, would be dangerous if given for the interest of these links for SEO and reputation they will generate. To block a SiteLink, simply select it and click “Block”. The site links blocked a Google search results for 90 days. This period will be extended every time you visit the Sitelinks page on Webmaster Tools.
Although SiteLinks webmastertools are visible, it is possible that they are not displayed in search results. In fact, you want to see the links, it needs a minimum of 3 sitelinks.
Ways to get the sitelinks:
It is impossible to control the appearance site links in the SERPs but one may influence the links for integration into SiteLinks. Indeed, if one has a website whose audience has been steadily increasing, it is a automatic process that make Google to give the site SiteLinks (remember, there is no human intervention! Everything is automated!) In this context then, here are some optimization to be implemented to influence the decision of Google:
- Arrange to be first on your brand and generate sufficient traffic to your site. This is already done if you have chosen a good domain name which incorporates your brand name.
- Highlight your page policy and make sure that your links stand out visually strategy to increase their rate of clicks and turn them into Sitelinks.
- Use short headings and explicit links. This minimizes the Sitelinks “click here” or “validate” to appear.
- If you have image links, check and optimize systematically with alt attribute
- If you want to control safely the text of the Sitelinks, use the same anchor text for links and for the <title> of the page.
- If you are emailing, use direct links to pages to promote instead of returning to the home page, again in order to create traffic on these pages.
- Avoid using technologies that impede Google bot: links with javascript, Flash, etc.
