The larger the space and more real estate you can own in the SERPs, the better your chances of gaining the clicks and website traffic that you want from your target audience.<\/p>\n
An important and often overlooked aspect of the SERPs, and your opportunity to gain visibility, is through sitelinks.<\/p>\n
What Are Sitelinks?<\/h2>\n
Sitelinks are additional links or navigational elements for a specific website or domain that appear with a text result or ad result in the SERP.<\/p>\n
More broadly, they are navigational in nature and allow searchers to see more of the ways they can click into your site.<\/p>\n
In the current era of context-focused SEO and the emphasis on user engagement and experience (which I fully embrace and agree with), sitelinks are great ways to not just own real estate, but also to get important clicks and have users stick when they land on your site.<\/p>\n
In organic search, Google\u2019s algorithm only shows sitelinks for pages it deems relevant and useful to the user.<\/p>\n
One of the benefits of sitelinks is that they can improve click-through rates (CTRs), as they increase the amount of real estate a text result has on the SERP. In doing so, they push down other results potentially below the fold, or out of view.<\/p>\n
Sitelinks can improve the visibility of internal pages. Underperforming pages<\/a> can see traffic improve if they appear as sitelinks on more popular pages.<\/p>\n Having sitelinks with your organic results and paid ads is an important opportunity that is often overlooked.<\/p>\n CTRs, getting users to stick around, and matching them up with the content they want from us are vital to success in SERPs.<\/p>\n Sitelinks can be a part of doing more with your positive rankings and further provide quality opportunities to searchers.<\/p>\n There are several types of common sitelinks:<\/p>\n Inline sitelinks are typically shown as four links in a horizontal row below the primary search result.<\/p>\n The version that might come to mind first for you \u2013 as it does for me \u2013 is expanded sitelink groups.<\/p>\n Those take up the most real estate in the SERP and appear as a list underneath the primary text (or organic) result. They also include descriptions, which can be pulled from the meta description or text that Google has chosen relevant to the user\u2019s search.<\/p>\n A search box sitelink is a concise search box that appears below the primary text result. It allows users to access your site\u2019s search engine directly.<\/p>\n These are tied to ads and are the most controllable by site owners.<\/p>\n Sitelinks can be created and added to relevant campaigns and ad groups and appear under the text ad link and primarily copy.<\/p>\n Note that I have also seen other types of sitelinks in short-lived instances. A recent example was a horizontal, swipeable carousel of sitelinks on mobile that appears not to be active or in the wild anymore.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no way to tell Google to show site links or to add or delete them directly.<\/p>\n However, you do have specific ways that you can take action and implement best practices to try to get them and manage them indirectly.<\/p>\n For organic opportunities, the best practices for getting sitelinks under a text result start with using informative, relevant, and concise page titles and headings on your website.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also want a site structure that users and bots can efficiently navigate.<\/p>\n That means making sure the important and relevant pages are being linked to from the page. Utilizing breadcrumbs<\/a> can also help Google understand the site\u2019s structure, the relationship between pages, and the overall hierarchy.<\/p>\n Concise and relevant anchor link text is also important to factor into your site and efforts.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re advertising through Google Ads, you can get sitelinks easily by adding them to your ad groups and campaigns.<\/p>\nTypes Of Sitelinks<\/h2>\n
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Inline Sitelinks<\/h3>\n
![\"Inline](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/sitelinks-what-are-they-how-do-you-get-them-via-sejournal-coreydmorris.png\")
Screenshot from Google, December 2022<\/span><\/div>\nExpanded Sitelinks<\/h3>\n
![\"Four](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/sitelinks-what-are-they-how-do-you-get-them-via-sejournal-coreydmorris-1.png\")
Screenshot from Google, December 2022<\/span><\/div>\nSearch Box Sitelinks<\/h3>\n
![\"Sitelinks](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/sitelinks-what-are-they-how-do-you-get-them-via-sejournal-coreydmorris-2.png\")
Screenshot from Google, December 2022<\/span><\/div>\nPaid Sitelinks<\/h3>\n
![\"Ad](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/sitelinks-what-are-they-how-do-you-get-them-via-sejournal-coreydmorris-3.png\")
Screenshot from Google, December 2022<\/span><\/div>\nHow To Get Sitelinks<\/h2>\n
Text Link Sitelinks Best Practices<\/h3>\n
Other Sitelink Types<\/h3>\n