Earlier this week you may have been using Google, and noticed another evolution in their results pages, with the development of more detailed sitelinks.
Sitelinks are “the two columns of links that appear under some search results and ads that help users easily navigate deeper into the site.” Still unsure? The image below displays how they used to be displayed:
Although these were useful, Google has decided to develop these one step further so that you now not only see the links, but also a description too - similar to the individual search results that you see on the page, as shown in the example below.
So what does this mean for the optimisation of your website?
Quite simply these expanded sitelinks mean that you should be paying more attention to the construction of your meta titles and descriptions on your website to ensure that they are correctly completed.
This development means that there is a greater need for the meta information on each of your webpages to be truly reflective of the content on that particular page. The reason being, if a user clicks the sitelink to your website about a particular product, they will be expecting to land on that page.
If you’re fortunate enough to have sitelinks, they can now be even more influential than ever before. Whereas the condensed sitelinks meant your website had a greater prominence, the revised versions mean that your listing can take up the bulk of the users screen above the fold, which can result in a much high click through rate.
Are there any useful tools for sitelinks?
Google has a tool that you may be interested in using to test the potential snippets that will display for your webpages, is the Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
In terms of manipulating the sitelinks that are displayed for your website, this unfortunately isn’t possible. However, you are able to ‘demote’ the pages which Google will take into account when they generate the sitelinks, although this isn’t guaranteed. To do this, login to your Webmaster Tools, go to Site Configuration, then Sitelinks and follow the straightforward instructions… Simples!
