Google sitelinks are displayed underneath a listing within the search engine result pages (SERPs), offering navigation to a deeper page within the website. Site links have been a feature within the search engine result pages (SERPs) for a very long time that have proven very useful and allow users navigation to a deeper page within the website, with changes being implemented on a regular basis.
Just recently the site links within the Google’s SERPs went through a major face lift. Each section of the site is much more clearer than before and include full size links, a URL and a line of snippet text. The new changes have been created in order to increase visibility, flexibility, clarity and quality. It must also be made clear that the new and improved site links only appear for brand searches.
With new benefits created, let’s look at the key changes the improved sitelinks bring:
1. Improved Click Through Rate (CTR): With the site links being much more clearer and providing more space devoted to a particular website it will no doubt increase the CTR for listings that are within the top 5. It is also well known that any listing that includes site links receives must more visits that those without, inevitably reducing bounce rates also. More traffic to internal pages is an additional benefit that can help improve usability for users.
2. Higher Traffic: With increased visibility and ‘real estate’ within the SERPs it now pushes other links lower. Now each query carried out will affect the site links that will be chosen and displayed for each brand website. With the maximum amount of site links that can appear for a site now risen from 8 to 12.
Sitelinks bring many advantages and is important that every web page created has the opportunity to be fully optimizes in order to ensure they are active. Therefore there is a few changes that can be made to help increase the likelihood of making site links visible.
The changes that can be made are to ensure that all URLs within a website are simple and well structured. Also, Meta-descriptions and titles are now of much greater importance than before. Making sure a message can be delivered in 32 characters is now vital. Always remember to view Google’s webmaster guidelines for search engine optimisation techniques that can help Google find, index and rank your web site.
