How do you get Google “site links” to appear with your site’s listing?
Here’s a question that came in to LinkedIn regarding what Google calls “site links,” the links that can appear under a site listing which link directly to sub-pages and sub-sections of their sites. There were many good answers on the LinkedIn thread, and anyone with a free LinkedIn account can read them all here.
Quicksilver Search Results - Google Site Links
Based on the example site that the person submitted – Quiksilver.com – I did a little research on their Google result and came up with the following notes.
The main lesson for web business here is that having well-organized site content, and a solid content hierarchy and naming system (taxonomy), will help Google “understand” your site, and the better Google understands you, the more likely it is to promote you.
The Question
How to display categories links under the main link on Google? I’d like to display the categories links for an e-commerce website under the main link.
TITLE
DESCRIPTION
MAIN LINK
MEN
WOMEN
BOTTOMS
TOPS
If you search for Quiksilver in Google you’ll see what I mean. Do you know how to implement that? Thanks in advance for your help!
My Answer
There have been many good suggestions here already so I won’t repeat them but if you want to get those links for your site, looking at the Quicksilver results, there are two lessons you can learn. A) They’re using sub-domains to organize their content for the search engines, and B) They’re using their directory structure and URLs (see below) to optimize for SEO.
The “Womens” link goes to womens.quicksilver.com and collections goes to collections.quicksilver.com. Sub-domains when done correctly are very good for SEO.
Google “apple” right now – you’ll see www.apple.com, developers.apple.com, info.apple.com, livepage.apple.com, etc. Using sub-domains allows site to get multiple results on the same search result page, where usually Google only gives you two results per page for a domain. It’s been said that Google is going to limit the number of sub-domains that they’ll show on a result page, but that clearly hasn’t happened yet for Apple.
Even if Google tightens up, they’ll still show one or two sub-domains in addition to your main “www”, which helps since searchers then see you more times on the results page and competitors and critics get moved down on the page. Based on the Quicksilver results it seems that having good sub-domains will help you get picked up for the sitelinks people have discussed.
The other Quicksilver strategy: the “Jackets” link doesn’t go to a subdomain, but the URL shows that they are paying attention to announcing their naming/organization scheme (taxonomy) to Google. They even have the word “taxonomy” in the URL.
A good taxonomy for your site would be well-organized and well-named directories like:
/products/clothing/hats/winter
/products/furniture/tables/wood
This should help Google figure your site well enough to give you a fighting chance at getting those links.
