The topic of sitelinks came up in a forum and after answering, I received a private message to ask if I could blog about how you can get Google sitelinks.
Word of caution. I’ve been hearing that there are people saying that you can edit sitelinks from your Google Webmaster tools. This is not true. I believe people are confusing the demote link feature with adding a sitelink. Sitelinks are done automatically by Google.
Not all websites will get sitelinks. You really have to build your content and organize it well. Google is the one that decides what to put up for your sitelinks and it deals with how your website is organized and what Google thinks may be important.
Before answering, you need to know what a site link is.
What Is A Sitelink
A sitelink, according to Wikipedia is:
Sitelinks are hyperlinks to website subpages that appear under certain Google listings in order to help users navigate the site.
An example of a search engine result with sitelinks is:
Google uses sitelinks as a way to help your visitors surf your website.
How Can You Get Google Sitelinks?
Google does this automatically for you. The only things you have control over influencing this are:
- Optimizing your site’s pages and navigation
- Demoting links you do not think should turn up as a sitelink.
You will need to have a clear navigation that is organized and well coded. Your sections should be balanced and contain quality content.
Demoting links is basically telling Google that the link is not as important as the crawler made it out to be. You can submit the links that you don’t believe should be sitelinks.
To do this:
- Go to your Google Webmaster Tools
- Then go to the navigation and find Search Appearance
- Under Search Appearance, you will need to go to Sitelinks
- You will see a couple fields to give you a option to insert the links on your site that you wish to demote.
Here is an example of the page. You need to right click and open in either a new tab or a new window in order to view the image better.
You can only do this if you are an administrator to the site.
In the case that your site is new and you’re really wanting Google to list sitelinks under your website’s search results, have patience. It does take a little time, but it helps if your site’s navigation is done correctly.
Do you understand sitelinks better? Does your website have sitelinks in its search results?
Hi Nile,
I know that people are confused about this and I guess I can understand why. It’s almost like Google Page Rank – where they tell you just enough to keep you on the edge of your seat until you finally get it. lol
For newbie bloggers I know this is frustrating, but they’ll get used to it just like we did….
But just like you said – – Have patience Grasshopper!
lol… “grasshopper”. Its not annoying to hear others ask, but it is annoying when people assume and I wanted to set that straight.
HI Nile,
It’s really difficult to get Google sitelinks, especially for new website. However having easy navigation and well optimized webpages do help crawlers to get complete information from your website and then they can decide accordingly.
Thanks for your tips i got sitelinks in my company website by using this and preparing all my codes with arrange manners. Its a very good post on sitelinks will help other people’s who understand this as complicated.
Hi Nile, Google sitelink is something which need some organized layout and planning…..its a combination of navigation and internal links which tells google which pages are important for your site…
I have also taken some time to get them and it still keeps changing based on the internal link structure…tough to figure out but good to have them…
Been working on this one for quiet some time now but with no success, now I’m trying your technique and see if I can come up with a nice sitelink..
Thanks,
Nhick
Hello Nile,
This is a well needed guide for me. I know getting site-links arn’t hard but your tips are great. i already got site-links of my 6 months old blog without doing any trick but want to try these tips on my new blog.
So, thanks for sharing 🙂
~Honey Soni
hey Nile nice article this is the good advice and you hve to do the hard work to make good sitelinking.
Hi Nile,
this does clarify sitelinks a lot more.
It is good to know how to use this part of Google Webmaster tools.
One thing I like about the Suffusion theme I am using is that it allows you to adjust the text which appears under the link in the Google search results. I have done this in some of my posts.
Thank you for sharing your expertise!
Cheers,
Yorinda
hi Nile
nice article very informative post for me and also helpful google site link is very important for any website. thanks for sharing.
hello nile
thnx for the good advice and you hve to do the hard work to make good sitelinking.will try it nice share
I also got lots of Sitelinks in Google automatically. I don’t know what’s up with these site links. It automatically gets change, I think it works with different queries.
Hey Nile
Nice article and a good advice for how to get good site-linking by Google….
Thanks so much Nile.I was confusing with sitelinks. I thought that how my competitors add site links in Google SERPs.Now i understand the truth.First and foremost i should implement good navigation bar on my blog.Thanks again…. 🙂
Hi Nile,
Thanks for the info… having trouble verifying my site so have to work on this. Thank you for the info 🙂
nice article google site link is automatic process by google but google provide this site link to only that website which has good impression on web. thanks for sharing informative post.
One of my blog got sitelinks automatically.I will try to follow the above tips to get site links for my other blogs.
Thanks for this awesome post Nile
Google sitelinks show the worth of your website when people search your website in Google. Before read your post i was unaware about the sitelink option in Google webmaster tool. It is amazing option and very helpful too to get Google Sitelinks which look good for any website.
Hi Nile
Thanks for this. Google has recently started showing 2 sitelinks for my site and they missed off what is probably my most important page.
I’ll follow these steps now and see if I can get them to demote one of them and hopefully promote the one I’m after.
Hi, thanks for this posting, it’s nice to see how easy manageable the Webmaster tools are. I think the first step to get good sitelinks is to organize your website in a convenient and practicable way, to have a clear navigation and a well-visible heirarchy of pages. The keywords are vital because this is the way Google creates Sitelinks listing. Strong click through rates and search traffic are also important.
Very awesome and Helpful post,
I’ve wanting to have that for one of our sites for a while now, but i didn’t know what this is called to look it up, i have always thought this has to do with the sitemap xml, because i didn’t have one, so i created a sitemap xml and waited forever!
this is exactly what i am looking for, many thanks.
Best wishes!
Hi
It is hard sometimes when you are reading exactly getting what you are getting out of something and googles info is the same they only seem to give you snippets so as to not make it to easy for anybody with limited knowledge of seo
Lee
hi to all ! i think get site links from google is not so easy because it is auto generated and defined by google
Ya Google do it for you free of cost but it takes time . Older your site , Google automatically add your site links. But if the blog is new, Nile ‘s description is more than enough to understand the basics of Google site links.
Before my site have sitelinks however now, it seems that google removed it. I don’t know why?
Hey !! My site shows only the homepage in google search results. I want to show some categories as subresults. I tried demoting the links but thats not working.
Well, you may need to organize your site better. You also may want to re-think your thoughts on grammar and spelling in regards to SEO.
My site is verified but search results often don’t even show my image let alone sitelinks. My theme is badly in need of updating so hopefully once that is done I will have a better result.
Great article – I get clients confused about this all the time – feeling that they should be doing something to “fix” their site links – so I’ll send them over here to get the correct info
Nice article. I got Google Sitelinks without doing anything but if you use demote tools Google won’t appear your Sitelink in search result.
Thank
Thanks for the information, s this something that WordPress would check? You would think, how about plugins developed outside of WordPress?
heelo nile
Nice article. I got Google Sitelinks without doing anything dnnt knw how but thnx for mentioning the complete tutorial on it .
regards
deepti
Very Nice and unique article not find anywhere…….
Thnxx 4 sharing
This website was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found
something that helped me. Cheers!
Hello Nile,this is a great information thanks for sharing with us.
Nice!
Now I have enable the Google Sitelinks and my site look professional in Google Search Results.
Hi Nile,
This is another impressive post indeed.I guess you have put lot of efforts to produce this post and its very useful for me and other bloggers as well.
Thanks for sharing such an excellent post regarding getting Google site links.
Regard’s
Muhammad Mairaj
Hi, Nile! Thanks for offering us useful info! Coincidentally, I’m confused about how to get Google Sitelinks; thus, glad I found this website! After reading, I really, really, and really appreciate your efforts in collecting resources.
Hi Nile Madam,
Thanks for sharing this articles about Sitelinks.
My blogging mate told me to submit sitemap to webmaster tools,
But i find hard to understand webmaster tools and its function,
And now i feel like i understood little about webmaster tools and google sitelinks.
I use to read any article each day from your site.
And i’ll tell myself i studied something new as a newbie blogger.
Thank you again for this useful article 🙂
i’ll stick to your blog daily..