SEO
What Are They & How Do You Get Them
There are a lot of dynamics that impact what appears on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
In the current way that Google describes search results, SERPs can include text results, visual results, rich elements, exploration features, and more.
The larger the space and more real estate you can own in the SERPs, the better your chances of gaining the clicks and website traffic that you want from your target audience.
An important and often overlooked aspect of the SERPs, and your opportunity to gain visibility, is through sitelinks.
What Are Sitelinks?
Sitelinks are additional links or navigational elements for a specific website or domain that appear with a text result or ad result in the SERP.
More broadly, they are navigational in nature and allow searchers to see more of the ways they can click into your site.
In the current era of context-focused SEO and the emphasis on user engagement and experience (which I fully embrace and agree with), sitelinks are great ways to not just own real estate, but also to get important clicks and have users stick when they land on your site.
In organic search, Google’s algorithm only shows sitelinks for pages it deems relevant and useful to the user.
One of the benefits of sitelinks is that they can improve click-through rates (CTRs), as they increase the amount of real estate a text result has on the SERP. In doing so, they push down other results potentially below the fold, or out of view.
Sitelinks can improve the visibility of internal pages. Underperforming pages can see traffic improve if they appear as sitelinks on more popular pages.
Having sitelinks with your organic results and paid ads is an important opportunity that is often overlooked.
CTRs, getting users to stick around, and matching them up with the content they want from us are vital to success in SERPs.
Sitelinks can be a part of doing more with your positive rankings and further provide quality opportunities to searchers.
Types Of Sitelinks
There are several types of common sitelinks:
- Inline sitelinks.
- Expanded sitelink groups.
- Search box.
- Paid sitelinks.
Inline Sitelinks
Inline sitelinks are typically shown as four links in a horizontal row below the primary search result.
Expanded Sitelinks
The version that might come to mind first for you – as it does for me – is expanded sitelink groups.
Those take up the most real estate in the SERP and appear as a list underneath the primary text (or organic) result. They also include descriptions, which can be pulled from the meta description or text that Google has chosen relevant to the user’s search.
Search Box Sitelinks
A search box sitelink is a concise search box that appears below the primary text result. It allows users to access your site’s search engine directly.
Paid Sitelinks
These are tied to ads and are the most controllable by site owners.
Sitelinks can be created and added to relevant campaigns and ad groups and appear under the text ad link and primarily copy.
Note that I have also seen other types of sitelinks in short-lived instances. A recent example was a horizontal, swipeable carousel of sitelinks on mobile that appears not to be active or in the wild anymore.
How To Get Sitelinks
There’s no way to tell Google to show site links or to add or delete them directly.
However, you do have specific ways that you can take action and implement best practices to try to get them and manage them indirectly.
Text Link Sitelinks Best Practices
For organic opportunities, the best practices for getting sitelinks under a text result start with using informative, relevant, and concise page titles and headings on your website.
You’ll also want a site structure that users and bots can efficiently navigate.
That means making sure the important and relevant pages are being linked to from the page. Utilizing breadcrumbs can also help Google understand the site’s structure, the relationship between pages, and the overall hierarchy.
Concise and relevant anchor link text is also important to factor into your site and efforts.
Other Sitelink Types
If you’re advertising through Google Ads, you can get sitelinks easily by adding them to your ad groups and campaigns.
The sitelinks search box might be an appealing and helpful tool for your site as well.
For a sitelinks search box to appear on your text result, you need to have a functional search engine on your site where user queries direct them to a search results page. You must also add WebSite structured data to the home page that defines the SearchAction.
How To Remove A Sitelinks Search Box
Conversely, to remove a sitelinks search box from your site, you simply add this meta tag to your homepage:
<meta name="google" content="nositelinkssearchbox">
Management
If an unwanted page is being shown as a sitelink, consider whether that page needs to be indexed altogether.
If it should be indexed but isn’t relevant to the page in the result, consider how it is being linked to on the page.
Through indexing and physical linking, you can have some control over getting pages out of your sitelinks if they don’t belong or aren’t relevant.
In the past, there were tools within Google Webmaster Tools (the precursor to Google Search Console) that would allow you to remove certain sitelinks, but those controls are gone. Now, your best bet is managing what links are actually on your site and how they are presented to users and search engines.
Conclusion
Owning as much real estate as possible in the SERPs for organic results is a key goal for SEO and can positively impact impressions and clicks to your site.
With many other competing types of non-organic content in the SERPs, you want to have as much visibility and control as possible.
Sitelinks can give you a larger space, pull users into deeper links on your site, and provide more context to searchers before they enter the site.
More resources:
Featured Image: MaximP/Shutterstock
SEO
HARO Has Been Dead for a While
I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.
I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.
After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:
So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.
Here’s one of them:
Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…
I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!
Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:
Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:
- I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
- I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)
So… I decided to confront him 😉
Here’s what he said:
Shocker.
I pressed him for more details:
I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.
I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:
But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…
If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.
No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.
Sidenote.
Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?
If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.
My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.
For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉
I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).
Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.
Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉
SEO
Google Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
Google’s structured data documentation for vacation rentals was recently updated to require more specific data in a change that is more of a clarification than it is a change in requirements. This change was made without any formal announcement or notation in the developer pages changelog.
Vacation Rentals Structured Data
These specific structured data types makes vacation rental information eligible for rich results that are specific to these kinds of rentals. However it’s not available to all websites. Vacation rental owners are required to be connected to a Google Technical Account Manager and have access to the Google Hotel Center platform.
VacationRental Structured Data Type Definitions
The primary changes were made to the structured data property type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
The primary changes were made to the structured data type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
Address Schema.org property
This is a subtle change but it’s important because it now represents a recommendation that requires more precise data.
This is what was recommended before:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.”
This is what it now recommends:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Unit 6E”
Address Property Change Description
The most substantial change is to the description of what the “address” property is, becoming more descriptive and precise about what is recommended.
The description before the change:
PostalAddress
Information about the street address of the listing. Include all properties that apply to your country.
The description after the change:
PostalAddress
The full, physical location of the vacation rental.
Provide the street address, city, state or region, and postal code for the vacation rental. If applicable, provide the unit or apartment number.
Note that P.O. boxes or other mailing-only addresses are not considered full, physical addresses.
This is repeated in the section for address.streetAddress property
This is what it recommended before:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing.
And this is what it recommends now:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing, including the unit or apartment number if applicable.
Clarification And Not A Change
Although these updates don’t represent a change in Google’s guidance they are nonetheless important because they offer clearer guidance with less ambiguity as to what is recommended.
Read the updated structured data guidance:
Vacation rental (VacationRental) structured data
Featured Image by Shutterstock/New Africa
SEO
Google On Hyphens In Domain Names
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about why people don’t use hyphens with domains and if there was something to be concerned about that they were missing.
Domain Names With Hyphens For SEO
I’ve been working online for 25 years and I remember when using hyphens in domains was something that affiliates did for SEO when Google was still influenced by keywords in the domain, URL, and basically keywords anywhere on the webpage. It wasn’t something that everyone did, it was mainly something that was popular with some affiliate marketers.
Another reason for choosing domain names with keywords in them was that site visitors tended to convert at a higher rate because the keywords essentially prequalified the site visitor. I know from experience how useful two-keyword domains (and one word domain names) are for conversions, as long as they didn’t have hyphens in them.
A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.
Lastly, hyphenated domain names look tacky. Why go with tacky when a brandable domain is easier for building trust and conversions?
Domain Name Question Asked On Reddit
This is the question asked on Reddit:
“Why don’t people use a lot of domains with hyphens? Is there something concerning about it? I understand when you tell it out loud people make miss hyphen in search.”
And this is Mueller’s response:
“It used to be that domain names with a lot of hyphens were considered (by users? or by SEOs assuming users would? it’s been a while) to be less serious – since they could imply that you weren’t able to get the domain name with fewer hyphens. Nowadays there are a lot of top-level-domains so it’s less of a thing.
My main recommendation is to pick something for the long run (assuming that’s what you’re aiming for), and not to be overly keyword focused (because life is too short to box yourself into a corner – make good things, course-correct over time, don’t let a domain-name limit what you do online). The web is full of awkward, keyword-focused short-lived low-effort takes made for SEO — make something truly awesome that people will ask for by name. If that takes a hyphen in the name – go for it.”
Pick A Domain Name That Can Grow
Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too.
That’s why I’ve always recommended brandable domains that are memorable and encourage trust in some way.
Read the post on Reddit:
Read Mueller’s response here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Benny Marty
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