When it comes to traffic, every person or business who owns a website can always use a little bit more. Ranking in the top five for a specific keyword is really nice. Ranking in the top five for a handful of keywords is even better, but there are some other “tricks” you can do to bring more of that money generating traffic right into your website. Here is one idea that very few people are fully capitalizing on.
Google Sitelinks – What Are They?
Have you ever seen a search result where the top listing had more than one result? The initial result is the main website, but underneath there is a list of other URLs or pages from the same site. These are Google sitelinks, and they can be very powerful. Google sitelinks used to be reserved for larger corporate websites that had some significant Internet history, but not anymore.
The Importance of Google Sitelinks
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the full potential of this somewhat expanded search results listing. With a Google sitelinks result, there is less competition on the search result page, while at the same time, there are more results that highlight popular areas of your website. Visitors can bypass the homepage and go directly to the content they want and need. This offers users a more convenient approach to your content, but it does something different as well.
Most users pause to digest the additional search results. While doing this, they see an expansion of your content. This helps give your site some much needed authority, and it can increase brand awareness as well.
How Do You Get Google Sitelinks?
This is the million dollar question. If your website is fresh and new, don’t expect to get the royal sitelinks treatment right out of the starting gate. It will take some time for the mighty Google to realize which parts of your site are worthy of this expanded feature. However, there are a few things that can be done to ensure this feature gets “unlocked” in the not so distant future.
See Also: Improving Your SERP Listings with Google Sitelinks
As with any well-executed SEO campaign, our site should have easy navigation with clean code instructing Google’s spiders. The code could be properly formatted HTML5, CSS or Schema data. It could also be some Frankenstein mix of the three, but it must be clear, concise and easy to navigate. That’s all there is to it.
It goes without saying that your content should also be useful and relevant as well. If people are using your new Google sitelinks and quickly hitting the “back” button, and visiting a competitor’s website instead. Google is not going to continue giving your site that powerful extra search engine result real estate.
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