Google Sitelinks have been shown to increase Click Through Rate (CTR) by 10-30%. It most definitely is to your advantage to increase the chances these important links appear on your website or ecommerce store as it can help scale your digital assets and brands.
Many of us, who build their first websites and become self taught in ecommerce, digital marketing and SEO may not know about the importance of Google Sitelinks. Since white hat SEO methods which do not abuse loopholes and spam, can take six months to a year to show good results, sometimes it may be hard to know whether you are making progress. A great signal you are reaching your objectives is to spawn sitelinks for your brand in Google search. This shows your website is building authority and the right signals to rank for competitive keywords. In this post I share a few of the advantages of getting sitelinks and information to increase the chances to make them show up! Learning how to use Google Search Console is also a really powerful way to measure progress.
Below is a video about Google Sitelinks:
Benefits to Having Google Sitelinks show up on your website include:
0- Websites which show Sitelinks on Google Search have higher CTR, lowering bounce rate
1- Only High Authority Sites which Google Trusts show Sitelinks on the Search, boosting credibility
2- Your website listing takes more inventory than competitors, pushing them lower on the search
3- The best resource guides and informational links on your website will be easily accessible
4- Websites with Sitelinks rank #1 for the branded term or keyword being searched by the user
5- Google Sitelinks indicate SEO structure of your website is good
6- Matching Keywords used on Google query are shown in bold, resulting in better user experience
7- Adsense Ads shown on your website will be more relevant which usually results in higher payout
There is no proven formula to attain Google Sitelinks because this is an automated process. Google only shows Sitelinks if they feel it would help the user with their search intent. However, there are a few best practices you can take into account to increase the likelihood of spawning them. Here is a good resource about the topic.
If you follow the tips there eventually your website will start to appear with links just below it. Something like this as it has happened with mine.
As your site continues to climb in authority then bigger sitelinks will appear which will take bigger space on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s). I have yet to manifest those but by month #6 of launch I expect to have them. Is been around three months now since I launched. Soon after these small sitelinks appeared I’m starting to see more impressions and clicks coming from Google which is a great sign of progress!
Put the information to use and you will definitely see a boost in Click Through Rate (CTR) from google traffic once Sitelinks appear. With increased CTR, more people will see your website and important pages. Thus bringing bigger awareness to your products and services. Other ways to increase CTR is to use WordPress plug ins like RankMath which produce picture rich snippets and to write meta descriptions with call to actions.
If this information helped you here is a post about advertising strategies.
-Rey
PS: One other way to know whether your are making progress in the ranking process is to check within Google Search Console the last time Google visited your sitemap. If you notice they do it consistently like every week or everyday (as is my case now), then that is a great signal of progress!
If you want to know more about Search Console, Surfside PPC has done a great video: