In my previous post on the topic I summarized the theories behind Google Sitelinks. Now I would like to look into and also to ask for your experience on what’s the real benefit from them. Many webmasters are eager to get them but do they realize why? Or is that just following the overall trend?
I managed to single out only few benefits (the happy webmaster’s feeling of pride and satisfaction was not counted):
- Your listing is clicked through more often. It is necessary to note that most surfers who see your sitelinks are already familiar with your brand because Google Sitelinks usually show up for [brand name] searches - thus they were already searching for you, so most probably they would have clicked your listing even if there had been no sitelinks whatsoever. However ‘most probably’ doesn’t mean ‘necessarily’ and the small percentage of those searching will still skip the first listing (and that’s especially important if you have items of unmanaged negative reputation somewhere in top 10) - Google sitelinks will attract attention and make that small percentage even smaller.
- Your site seems more important to an end user. Well, sounds a bit fuzzy (as I wasn’t able to spot any supporting data on this), and I am not sure (and couldn’t find any research on that) what an SEO-unsavvy person might feel when he sees Google Sitelinks. I would though agree that sitelinks make the site listing in SERPs look more trustworthy.
- People get more interested in your brand. Very often pages that are appear as sitelinks are those that give more information about you and your site (e.g. ‘About us’, ‘Contact us’, etc) - that encourages people to click through to those pages and learn more about your company. The more they learn about you, the more they will remember afterwards. If you are wise enough to make those pages interesting and provide more catchy facts about your business, you will achieve even higher brand awareness from Google sitelinks.
- You get more traffic to internal pages. If you were lucky (and smart) enough to get really important pages to show up as sitelinks, that’s a real benefit. With smart navigation and highly targeted pages generating sitelinks, this will result in better conversions, higher user satisfaction and hence more loyal visitors and customers.
Any more? Please add the sitelinks benefits I failed to notice.
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16 responses so far ↓
David Wallace on Jul 22, 2008 at 11:45 am
When we finally got our site links, I was excited if for nothing else, that we were finally recognized as a brand.
When I see other sites with site links, I tend to view them as an established brand over others who do not have site links.
Charlie on Jul 22, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Good points! I got my first Site Links some time ago, and honestly this help me when trying to sell the product & services of that portal.
In fact, this increase a little but my SEO “reputation” :)
Mercy on Jul 22, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Ann,
From the third point you have mentioned (Google sitelink would be helpful in getting more brand awarness); this would be more possible only when we get sitelinks for our targeted search phrase / keyword. But Google offers site links to more Domain Names raher than Keywords. So how can we justify this!(Google sitelink would be helpful in getting more brand awarness)
Ankit on Jul 23, 2008 at 2:44 am
Nicely presented !
Immo on Jul 23, 2008 at 3:19 am
I think the most important benefit is the fourth : “more traffic to internal pages”. I really felt the difference when my sitelinks appeared in Google results.
forklift kiralama on Jul 23, 2008 at 7:40 am
thank you..
Trezora - Fashion Glass Jewelry on Jul 23, 2008 at 9:35 am
I have Google site links for my keywords “glass earrings”. The categories listed reflect my major categories as well as internal links that have high prominence. Interestingly, they list “pendant” and “pendants” as two categories. One points to the general page and one point to a unique item.
Bottom line, I have not seen an increase in traffic but it does look more authoritative. And, I have no idea why I have site links for “glass earrings” since I have done little optimization for them in a long time.
Richard Hartigan on Jul 23, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Pushing your competitors off the page. The real beauty is that the sitelinks algorithm is separate to the main algorithm, so you will often receive another listing beneath your sitelinks.
The positives of sitelinks far outweigh the negatives of no trademark protection that brand owners have been up in arms about here in the UK.
netmeg on Jul 23, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I actually noticed the effect of my sitelinks for the first time this month - one of my sites is a listing of fireworks displays in my state. The first batch of sitelinks I got weren’t terribly good ones, so we tried some things with the navigation, and they were updated - I noticed a *ton* of people coming in on the “Search by City” link as opposed to the front page, and a ton more coming on the direct link to the Detroit displays, which is the second most popular page. I don’t know as I could call it of any particular benefit to *me*, but I believe it definitely was a benefit to my users.
Brian Carter on Jul 23, 2008 at 6:22 pm
The HUGE listing (real estate/size) is a big part of it. Plus, when the sitelinks are accurate, getting people deeper into your site already more satisfied as users? Awesome.
John H Gohde on Jul 23, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I vote for Branding and Company Name ownership benefits. Rarely will you ever get one for any other keyword phrases.
Gidseo on Jul 25, 2008 at 6:13 am
Another top post Ms Smarty - thank you!
Given that you can go into webmaster tools and edit the sitelink pages /titles does anybody think there’s a value in doing that to rank higher on certain pages/keywords ie if you tell Goog that you think that’s one of your top pages do they throw that into the algos?
Wayne Smallman on Jul 27, 2008 at 4:58 am
As you mention, Sitelinks only really reinforce already successful brand names, which is handing more mind share to the bigger players.
That said, I’ve seen small web properties get themselves Sitelinks, but I do feel Google need to be more pro-active and take some of the automatedness [sic] out of how they’re generated.
I wrote a rather successful examination of Sitelinks earlier this year, which highlighted some of the fundamental weaknesses of Sitelinks, which have since shown their hand in the listings for own blog, Blah, Blah! Technology.
Principally, the titles of Sitelinks can often be “polluted” by silly things like the names of the first person to comment within the article selected as a Sitelink.
I’ve since had to block 4 Sitelinks because of the daft way the titles are created / selected.
On the whole, they’re a good thing, but Google don’t seem to demonstrate their control, which undermines my confidence…
David Bradley on Jul 30, 2008 at 3:38 am
Have to agree with Wayne, SiteLinks for most of us are really only relevant if someone knows your brand already. It would be so much better if they popped up for a chosen keyword. Dream on…
Vivek Sappal on Jul 30, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Real meaty, informative seo stuff for middle level to pros. Will definitely help if someone is devotes to it.
Darren Atkinson on Sep 10, 2008 at 4:34 am
Great article, very informative.
I have just published a related article detailing traffic and conversion rate increases seen after attaining Sitelinks for one of my clients targeted keywords:
http://www.darrenatkinson.co.uk/articles/google-sitelinks-analysis/
Thought it might add something to the discussion.
Many thanks, Darren
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