Sitelinks in Google Webmaster Tools

What are Sitelinks?
Take a look at the below Google listing. You will notice a few links under the regular listing … Inside Politics, Political Ticker, etc. Google has determined that this is the navigational hierarchy for cnn.com. These are referred to as Sitelinks.

Can I change the Sitelinks listed by Google?
Google webmaster tools gives you [...]

What are Sitelinks?
Take a look at the below Google listing. You will notice a few links under the regular listing … Inside Politics, Political Ticker, etc. Google has determined that this is the navigational hierarchy for cnn.com. These are referred to as Sitelinks.

Can I change the Sitelinks listed by Google?
Google webmaster tools gives you the ability to block specific Sitelinks. You are not able to modify the Sitelinks, or add to the list of Sitelinks. To block Sitelinks, login to Google webmaster Tools and click “Links” > “Sitelinks.”

Can I Influence the Sitelinks?
There are a couple of ways to influence Sitelinks:

1. Your website should be easy to navigate and users should understand how to drill through your site. It should be EASY to find the information they are looking over through a meaningful hierarchy. If a user experiences difficulties navigating through your website, chances are that a search engine will as well.
2. When you submit your XML sitemap to Google, you can set the priority of each page, 1 being the highest. The higher the priority, the more important the page is. Google may not use this data but they will definitely consider it.

I found the information on Hochman Consultants pretty useful. Here’s what they say:

I’ve worked on a number of sites with Sitelinks, and these sites are similar in the following ways:

1. Site ranks first for the keyword(s) that generate the Sitelinks listing
2. Easily spiderable, structured navigation
3. Fairly high natural search traffic
4. High click through rates from the search results page
5. Useful outbound links
6. Inbound links from high quality sites
7. Site age is several years or older

Here are some more helpful links:
Provide Feedback on Sitelinks
How does Google compile the list of links shown below search results?
How To Get Google Sitelinks

This stuff has been around for a while but it’s never too late to brush up.