How do you get Google Sitelinks?

In this article, I am going to discuss the issue related to Google sitelinks. So the article is going to be little technical.

Before three years, webmasters noted that Google has started showing "sub topic" or "sub category" links within the results. Now Google has finally implemented the change and the name given to that service is "SiteLinks".

Sitelinks are the additional links that appear below search results in Google. They basically serve as a shortcut for internal pages of the website. It allows users to easily navigate through your website.

Google sitelinks are the ultimate endorsement of a website. While there are many clear compensation but knowing how to place site links is always like searching something in a dark art. More guess work and then hard work. But there is always a way out.

Last month in Feb, 2008, I planned to get Google sitelinks for one of my website. It was a very good experience to gain sitelinks as I also learned alot about Google sitemaps. As usual, Google is not entirely helpful in explaining the sitelink system. I worked on alot of options and found a way to get my sitelinks. I am going to share my experience so that you can also get sitelinks for your website by using these following steps:

1. Create Google sitemap of your site (e.g. sitemap.xml)

2. Upload this sitemap to your domain (e.g. www.domain.com/sitemap.xml)

3. Submit this URL in Google webmaster tool.

After submitting the sitemap, the next step is to verify your site on Google. Google offers two methods for verification. You can either upload an html file with the name which Google will specify on verification screen or you can add a Meta tag to your index file.

After verification, Select links from the left menu of webmaster tools and then navigate to sitelinks. From there you can see the pages which Google is going to use as sitelinks. You can easily manage your sitelinks from there and also block any page you don’t want to show as a sitelink.

I hope that the above information will help you in getting your sitelinks placed on Google.

Junaid Ashraf is the SEO Specialist in eNet Technologies. Website Design and Search Engine Optimization Company.