Sitelinks is still a new feature, and Google displays these extra links in search results. Normally it displays a title linking to your website url, description and your website url in green words.

But sitelinks are additional links not just the normal things it displays. It’s like a menu for searchers to easily navigate the website. Sitelinks in fact were invented so searchers can go directly go some of the site pages from the search results.

Directly to the blog for example without having to visit the site first. You can allow Google to put sitelinks, this short menu as well for your website. They display it for particular keywords, so not for all keywords that your site appears. For example searching for dog food may show your website plus sitelinks menu, while searching for cheap dog food may not show sitelinks at all.

Generally speaking, most often it’s the site ranked number that has the sitelinks. That opinion is from observation only.

Things worth knowing:

If you get a Google Webmaster Account, you can tell Google if it’s currently showing sitelinks for your website any urls that you wish not to display in the sitelinks menu. Just by clicking Block next to the url. Note that doing so, that link will not be displayed for a period of time, then you will have to block it again. Period probably is somewhere in the range of six months.

Google does not display sitelinks manually to some big websites. Any website, big or small can display sitelinks in search results. It’s done automated not manually.

So here’s some tips to have a better chance of getting sitelinks menu. A common menu for all your website pages is a great positive thing to do. On all your website pages, have the same constant menu. The links in that menu deemed important will have a big chance to be displayed in sitelinks menu.

You just think about a menu that your visitors will find useful, and display it on all your website pages. Those links make sure are the links you also want to be displayed in sitelinks. So if you want to display contact us page in the menu of your website, it’s useless for sitelinks menu so put the nofollow tag on it.

Create a common menu for all your website pages and use the nofollow tag on links that are useless to be displayed in sitelinks. For example, it’s useless to get Privacy Policy displaying in search results. Who cares? A features page, blog, articles page and so on are good pages to list in sitelinks menu.

If you can display the same menu twice on each page. That’s double powerful, one on top and one on bottom works the best. But again do not sacrifice your conversion rate just to display sitelinks in search results.

So this article have showed you what are sitelinks, how to have a big chance to allow Google to display sitelinks for your website plus how to block some urls from appearing in sitelinks menu.

If your are building a website from scratch you can apply these simple onpage optimization techniques. I won’t suggest you go and edit all your website pages – in fact it’s NOT recommended because you end up with lots of 404 pages.

For new pages, etc you are going to create here are great techniques:

Google’s new feature description is further below this amazing article.

*For files names use the – to seperate words. Put words that make sense, if a page is about dog food than use dog-food.html not abs.html or dogfood.html

It’s more easier to read and understand it. Users will love it more. Google loves what users love. For files only not folders.

* Your website should be focused on a niche, relevant content should be visible first. If you have dog related articles you can put them all in one folder called Articles. Organize folders if you need to create folders.

One folder for articles, one for images, one for affiliates and so on.

* Make one common navigation menu with the most important pages of your website. Use that menu on all your website pages. Great for visitors to understand how your website is structured quickly and it helps them navigate easily – they won’t get confused.

* If you have articles put them on an articles page. Say inside the articles folder. But if you have many articles create categories or subcategories. If you have 4 types of dog related articles like dog vitamins articles, dog health articles, dog food articles, dog accessories articles… and say 10 articles for each category – then create a page on your website and put the four categories on the page.

Dog vitamins articles
Dog health articles
Dog food articles
Dog accessories articles

Each one links to a page, which has the ten article titles. So for example Dog vitamins articles will link to a page called dog-vitamins.html

On that page you see ten article titles, each article title linking to one of the ten articles.

This is very organized, users can click a button to see articles related to a specific category.

Much much better than a list of article titles all on one page.

You can see an example of this on my SEO Articles page.

Easy navigation is the key to getting your website pages indexed as well. Proper navigation is required. Keep it in mind when creating pages.

Google have a feature called Sitelinks. If you have a proper navigation menu you can benefit from this feature.

Here’s what it does:

When you type a keyword like dog food and your website is listed you will usually see your website title, description and url. Those basic things which are common for all websites listed in the search engine results.

However Sitelinks are an additional to that. Google can show links to your inner pages like features, articles, anything… as well not just the “common” info, title, description and url. Even a search box.

Popular sites which are big and have a common menu on all their website pages already show these links.

Sitelinks feature are completely automated. Google do not assign these links to specific websites manually. No! It’s done automatically using their software that like the spider considers certain things to decide whether to display Sitelinks for a site or no.

A curious thing:

From your Google webmasters account you have an option called Sitelinks. If Google search engine is displaying these “extra links” for certain searches you can see in this option which are the links. Even block some links if you don’t want them to appear.

Neat feature, this is once again to show that Google’s aim is to provide the searchers with maximum value.

These sitelinks help users navigate quickly to specific pages of the site.

So take advantage of these simple onpage optimization techniques plus the newest sitelinks feature.