I don’t have any sitelinks for this domain, but I can see the great appeal in having these. I have been reading all the bigger SEO blogs speaking about their Google sitelinks. Quite jealous I am.

How do I get Google sitelinks?

According to Google, their “systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for”. Google is showing up to 8 sitelinks for each site, and Google mobile is showing up to 10 sitelinks.

The Google Operating System provided a link to the patent filed in 2005 which I of course have read through and am going to of course share with you now in condensed less boring fashion.

1. For any given search query, the sitelinks “method” may return at least one result with sitelinks to help the user.
2. Based on the number of accesses of a page.
3. The most visited sitelink will be first, ordered to the least accessed sitelink.
4. Amount of time accessed.
5. Number of web pages linking to the pages.
6. How closely the search query matches.
7. Based on purchases made. (O_O!!!)

The patent explains this in great vague detail, but that is the gist of it. The information, retrieved from Google toolbars, analytics, webmaster tools, search are what make up the bulk of their data, and having a flat site architecture (ie. just link to each page 2x on each page and you get sitelinks). It seems, for the time being at least, that only sites with a great deal of traffic are getting sitelinks. This would make sense as much of their data must come from the toolbar and not everybody has the toolbar and not everybody agrees to send information to Google. And so enough people who have the toolbar and who agree to send info to Google have to visit your site, and enough people to give Google some kind of data about page accesses and amount of time spent on the page. And you must consider your flat architecture and you must consider your relevancy to the search query. But in the end, it’s all automatic and only MARKETING your site will help. SEO is not going to help you here my friend, unless you mean indirectly by getting to the top 3 for your queries and getting tons of traffic, and then getting sitelinks after that.

And this further means that just because you have sitelinks for one particular search term, does not mean you will get sitelinks for every search term. I tried it, with many “sitelinks” sites - it depends on how well you match the search query in question. For example, with SEObook.com (who has 8 sitelinks) you must search with exact term “seo book” and/or “aaron wall”. I tried many variations of relevant keywords but found that either the exact phrase “seo book” or the exact phrase “aaron wall” must appear. This is the same for all other sites with sitelinks (but this IS something that can be built upon, true?).

Since I can’t have sitelinks, what should I do to get sitelinks

• It is still important to have a nice flat site architecture, and linking to the most important pages of your site on every page makes sense from a user perspective in any case. It will increase the likelihood of their navigation through the pages.
• Make each page of your site different and important. Don’t list all the relevant information on the home page, and have a bunch of uninteresting subpages. Give the user a reason to navigate through your site. Be vague on the home page if need be. ;) (that was a joke, not that funny though)
• If you don’t sell anything, keep in mind that there are ways of “mimicking” a sale. Have the user interact with your page. I am pretty sure that counts too. Have them submit or send or do something. I am just guessing here.
• Increase traffic to your site. (But that is a whole other story.)

Okay, and one last pearl of wisdom for the bloggers out there: have your RSS feed subscribe button lead to another page of your site and have them subscribe from that page. This page will no doubt become a sitelink eventually as you become a high traffic blog. ;) Your About Page as well. Create a few more other pages that are aimed at really drawing the attention of EVERYBODY that visits your blog (ie. be controversial). And these can be your sitelinks when you are deemed worthy.

Or: Get 1000 computers with the Google toolbar and then pay 1000 people to navigate through your site for 3.5 months. Sitelinks guaranteed! ;)