Sitelinks: What They Are and Why They’re Important for SEO

I’m sure you’ve seen sitelinks before, but you may not have realized it.

Sitelinks are a specific listing format in the search engine results page (SERP) that show a website’s homepage plus several targeted internal pages indented below the main entry, and organized into two columns. In the screenshot below, the top result indicates BoostSuite’s homepage listing, and those below are our internal site links:

Sitelinks only display for branded or navigational queries. For example, when users search for “boostsuite,” they are probably trying to get to our site, www.boostsuite.com. Google recognizes this automatically, so they deliver not only boostsuite.com as the main result, but also additional options that point potential visitors to internal pages.

There are some variations within sitelink displays, too. Google may display both Knowledge Graph and sitelink results for many branded searches. Here’s an example of “Joseph A Bank” displaying both the sitelinks on the left as well as a knowledge graph on the right:

Why Are Sitelinks Important for SEO?

To put it in the simplest of terms, Google wants to help its users find what they’re looking for and get to where they want to go in as few steps as possible. They give the best results in the shortest amount of time.

By doing that, they provide your visitors with a much better user experience overall. Instead of them landing on your homepage and having to sift through your navigation or site search to find what they’re looking for, they’re taken right to it.

As Google states, “We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.”

Besides timeliness and usefulness, sitelinks can improve your website by:

• Establishing brand reputation with more visual cues


• Increasing trust by showing more content from your site


• Taking up more valuable search result page real estate


• Increasing click-through rates since there are more links to click


• Shortening the conversion funnel because visitors go directly to product and contact pages

How Do You Create Sitelinks?

Unfortunately, there isn’t any known way to create sitelink listings. It’s impossible to do it on your own.

Sitelinks are created automatically by Google and they don’t give any hints as to how it’s done. You also don’t get to choose which links are featured or when. However, you can indicate that a sitelink is not important or relevant by demoting it.

Sitelinks are created through good content marketing and SEO practices, both on and off site. The process of creating sitelinks may sound like website development 101, but that’s because the process of creating sitelinks is simply about following industry-standard practices in the creation and development of a site.

Sitelinks, like most of the search engine world, are dominated by the algorithm.

This means that creating sitelinks is about learning from the algorithm’s behavior, following best practices, and hoping for the best results.

Here are some general guidelines you can follow to increase your odds of getting sitelinks for your website:

1. Use a Unique Brand Name

Sitelinks depend upon website’s domain name, which is usually dependent on your brand name. Your site will not rank for navigational search unless it has something that sets it apart from generic searches.

For example, Lids.com is a brand name that differentiates itself from the generic search for “hats”.

2. Organize Your Site to Make It Flow Logically

If you have a clearly organized site, it’s going to be much easier for the search engines to crawl. This increases your chances of getting sitelinks. When you develop your site navigation, make sure that it possesses a clear and logical flow.

Your navigation bar, usually at the top or on the side of your website, is the best way to display your site structure. Google states:

“All sites have a home or “root” page. It’s usually the most visited page on a site and the starting place of navigation for visitors. From the home page, help visitors find other pages on your site by creating a navigation bar. A good navigation bar calls out important sections of your site, is clear about where it’ll take visitors, and follows a logical structure. Intuitive and organized navigational categories include ‘Home’, ‘News’, and ‘Contact Us.’ You can place the navigation bar on the top or side of each page for easy access.”

3. Create a Sitemap.xml

Creating a sitemap further facilitates the crawling of your site. Not only does this help with crawling, but it also alerts Google of new content on your site. By building out your sitemap.xml in an accurate and comprehensive way, you will be able to increase the likelihood of more targeted and numerous sitelinks.

Most commonly used website building tools come equipped with sitemaps or have plugins readily-available that can set one up automatically. A quick Google search containing your website builder and the keyword “sitemap” will provide you with what you need to know.

You should also tell Google where your sitemap is located via Webmaster Tools.

4. Create Useful, Relevant, and Information-Rich Content

You must publish new content on your blog and get your content published on relevant industry blogs, as well. BoostSuite can help you determine which keywords to write about and which of your industry partners wants to publish your content right now.

Google’s goal in providing sitelinks is to give users the most relevant information, as quickly as possible. There can only be relevant information where the right content is on your site. All of your pages need to have content, and lots of it.

Sometimes, websites don’t have enough content on the main navigational pages (about us, contact us, etc.). This is bad. By featuring plenty of solid content on these pages, you’ll improve SEO on many fronts, including having the right sitelinks.

5. Link to Your Other Website Pages with Text

Linking to your other pages is how Google’s algorithm knows which of them to display as sitelinks. I ask that you use text links because they’re more important and better than image links.

You should do be doing internal linking throughout your website’s content. A well-developed internal linking strategy means that you are creating links to deep pages using natural anchor text.

6. Develop Accurate Page Titles

The most important on-page SEO feature is the page title. Google depends on your page titles to provide sitelink information. Your page titles should be descriptive and relevant to their content.

7. Build Traffic and Wait

Google’s public-facing search guru Matt Cutts, said that you must “be patient.” He added that “enough people [need to] know about your website”, and “people [need to] to find out about your website.” This suggests that Google’s algorithm awards sitelinks based on sufficient amount of traffic.

8. Be #1

The only websites that receive sitelinks are those that are already number one in the SERPs. There’s just no such thing as a number two position SERP entry that has sitelinks. You must be number one.

It’s extremely difficult to rank number one for general queries, such as “insurance” or “marketing,” so instead try to write new content focusing on long-tail queries that are relevant to your audience such as “how to choose the insurance package for your family,” or “3 little-known facts about do-it-yourself marketing.”

Obviously, the easiest terms to rank number one for are branded terms — your company name, URL or brand.

Wrapping All This Up

If you privileged enough to have Google create sitelinks for you, expect to see an increase in organic website traffic, reputation, and search result page click thrus. Getting sitelinks isn’t a matter of luck, it just takes due diligence with your content marketing best practices and SEO. Follow these steps, wait a little bit, and you’ll start seeing your sitelinks appear soon.

Sitelinks: What They Are and Why They’re Important for SEO