{"id":13934,"date":"2022-06-16T10:41:03","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T10:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/has-googles-seo-office-hours-lost-its-spark\/454491\/"},"modified":"2022-06-16T10:41:03","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T10:41:03","slug":"has-googles-seo-office-hours-lost-its-spark-via-sejournal-martinibuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/?p=13934","title":{"rendered":"Has Google\u2019s SEO Office Hours Lost It\u2019s Spark? via @sejournal, @martinibuster"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Google\u2019s John Mueller answered a question about what strategy to use to make specific pages show as sitelinks in Google\u2019s search results.<\/p>\n

Mueller provided an answer that noticeably matched what\u2019s in the official Google Search Central documentation for sitelinks, although he added a little more nuance than what\u2019s in the official documentation.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Google\u2019s new tightly controlled SEO Office Hours format is starting to show some limitations.<\/p>\n

How to Make Pages Appear as a Sitelink?<\/h2>\n

The person asking the question wanted to know ways to influence Google to show specific pages in the sitelinks.<\/p>\n

Sitelinks are additional links from a web page that is shown in a search result, so that one of the search results contains multiple links.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIs there any strategy by which desired pages can appear as a sitelink in Google search results?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mueller first explained what sitelinks are:<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo sitelinks are the additional results that are sometimes shown below a search result, where it\u2019s usually just a one-line link to a different part of the website.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Next he explained how Google generates sitelinks:<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd there is no meta tag or structured data that you can use to kind of like enforce a sitelink to be shown.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a lot more that our systems try to figure out what is actually kind of related or relevant for users when they\u2019re looking at this one web page as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lastly, Mueller offers recommendation on what to do for sitelinks:<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd for that, our recommendation is essentially to have a good website structure, to have clear internal links so that it\u2019s easy for us to recognize which pages are related to those pages, and to have clear titles that we can use and kind of show as a sitelink.<\/p>\n

And with that, it\u2019s not that there\u2019s a guarantee that any of this will be shown like that.<\/p>\n

But it kind of helps us to figure out what is related.<\/p>\n

And if we do think it makes sense to show a sitelink, then it\u2019ll be a lot easier for us to actually choose one based on that information.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Answers Are Similar To Google\u2019s Official Documentation<\/h2>\n

Previously the SEO Office Hours format permitted live questions and answers.  That\u2019s gone now.<\/p>\n

What Google is presenting are pre-screened questions with pre-screened answers.<\/p>\n

The new format gives Mueller time to choose questions and research good answers ahead of time.<\/p>\n

The answer Mueller provided is good but it also highlights a downside of Google\u2019s new Q&A format that feels scripted and safe to the point that the information closely mirrors Google\u2019s official documentation.<\/p>\n

The down side is that the new format has the feel of Mueller Googling the answer for you then paraphrasing what\u2019s on Google\u2019s developer pages.<\/p>\n

This is what\u2019s on Google\u2019s Search Central page<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe only show sitelinks for results when we think they\u2019ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn\u2019t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don\u2019t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user\u2019s query, we won\u2019t show them.<\/p>\n