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View Full Version : How do you get page listings under your domain in the serps ?



Harold Mansfield
08-18-2009, 11:40 AM
This has been bothering me more and more lately.
How do you get your pages or categories listed under your domain ?
You know how if you type a domain in the search bar, and it comes up first in the serps, but it also has pages listed as sub headings under the listing ?

I have tried everything and apparently I don't know jack because I can never achieve this.
What's the deal with that ?

vangogh
08-18-2009, 11:49 AM
It's not something that's really known. I've never seen anyone offer any suggestions for it. From observing the sites that have the extra links they are big sites, they are generally authorities within their niche (lots of links pointing to them), and they usually have several areas within the site that might make for a good starting point.

You'll usually find those extra links depend on the specific queries too. Often the query is a search on the brand. For example if you search ESPN as a single word you'll see several site links below that are major categories within the site. If you search ESPN Baseball, you'll see a different set of sitelinks below that are major categories within the section. If you then search ESPN Baseball Stats you'll no longer see any sitelinks below.

You can't control the query, but for the rest you'd likely need to be a large authority site with many many incoming links to different sections of the site. That's why people won't usually attempt to gain sitelinks as the goal of a campaign. It's more in line with the overall idea of building out a site and acquiring links and hoping you meet whatever extra criteria it will take to get Google to show the sitelinks.

billbenson
08-18-2009, 01:32 PM
Could it be related to deep linking?

Spider
08-18-2009, 01:43 PM
...From observing the sites that have the extra links they are big sites, they are generally authorities within their niche (lots of links pointing to them), and they usually have several areas within the site that might make for a good starting point...I have no idea what the answer is but I'm fairly sure this isn't it, because I have occasionally found my coaching site to have a single internal page sub-head result. And my site is not an "authority" coaching site and doesn't have a lot of incoming links.

I cannot think of a search term that has induced this in the past. Perhaps one could try lots of searches for one's own site to see if they can make it happen and figure out why. I have no idea why it happens.

vangogh
08-18-2009, 02:05 PM
Frederick I think eborg is meaning something different than what you described. If I'm understanding right (always possible I'm not) you're talking about having a sub page of your site rank. eborg is talking about sites where you search for them by a generic search like their company name, you'll see below their main page a list of links to other sections of the site.

Try the basic ESPN search and you can see those extra links below.

You definitely don't need to have a ton of links to have subpages rank.

nealrm
08-18-2009, 02:08 PM
I beleive Vangough is correct. It appears to be associated with authority and the ranking of the internal pages. However, while you cannot contact if or which sitelinks are displayed, you can control which pages are not displayed. To block specific pages, setup an account with Googles webmastertools. Goto Site configuration -> Sitelinks. There you will find a list of possible sitelinks and a "Block" button.

Spider
08-18-2009, 03:57 PM
Frederick I think eborg is meaning something different than what you described. ...When I searched Google for ESPN I saw a #1 listing for -

ESPN
.. MLB .. Streak for the Cash
.. NBA .. College Basketball
.. NFL .. NHL
.. Fantasy .. College Football

and a #3 listing

Fantasy Games -- ESPN
Play fantasy football, baseball, basketball, hockey, poker, and more on ESPN.com. Free and premium leagues available. Play today!
games.espn.go.com/ - Cached - Similar
.... Fantasy Football - Free Fantasy Football Leagues, Rankings and
.... Play Fantasy Football for free on ESPN! Expert analysis, live scoring, mock drafts, ..
.... Join or start a league today!

(The underline represents the link and the .... represents indentation.)

I was referring to the second (#3 listing) style of sub-head.


I just this minute searched Google for Frederick Pearce Houston and received the second (#3 listing) style of sub-head. There was also a link for "Show more results" which gave me a total of 6 subheaded results from my site.

Now I don't know what is being referred to here. This is what I got, FWIW.

vangogh
08-18-2009, 05:14 PM
Gotcha. A little different than what I thought you meant, but still different than what eborg was asking. What you see in the #3 listing is fairly common. You don't need to be the authority or have tons of links pointing to your site to get that kind of listing. I think it's more that Google sees more than one page on your site being relevant to a query and you do get the added benefit of getting two pages show up in the results instead of the one.

What eborg was asking about is that #1 listing which shows all the extra links below the main result. They're called sitelinks and I don't think I've ever seen anyone offer a good strategy for getting them other than building links into the pages that might show up in the sitelinks and into the site in general. If you have a Google account and have set up your site in Webmaster Tools, Google will tell you if any pages of your site might be listed in the sitelinks. Most of us won't have any pages listed, but some might. I think you can request that some pages not be listed there, but you can't ask Google to add pages to the list.

I think I have seen some sites you wouldn't expect to show those sitelinks, though usually it's a pretty big authority type site and the query that triggers the sitelinks are usually toward the generic side or mention the company brand.

Business Attorney
08-18-2009, 05:41 PM
My LLC info (http://www.limitedliabilitycompanycenter.com/) site does appear in the Google search results with sitelinks sometimes, depending on the search terms.

For example, if I type in 'LLC information' (without quotes), I get:

Limited Liability Company Center - Information on LLCs
LLC Center is an information resource for organizing and operating limited liability companies (LLCs)
State Information - North Carolina LLC - New Jersey LLC

I can see why Google may have chosen "State Information" for a site link, but have no idea why they would single out the pages for NC or NJ. They have no greater relevance than any other page on the site. The certainly are not a prominent part of the site architecture (such as it is...).

I don't really see that in my case it really helps anything.

Harold Mansfield
08-18-2009, 07:02 PM
I was sure there was a formula for that, and I just needed to learn it, but at least it means that I don't completely just suck.

vangogh
08-18-2009, 08:18 PM
David I see you do have the sitelinks. I searched on 'Limited Liability Company Center' (no quotes) and there they were. If you don't want some of those pages showing up you can set up an account with Google's Webmaster Central and tell them not to show some of those links. If they have other links they think should go there they'll add them.

Of course those extra links are usually a good thing in terms of traffic so maybe it's best to leave them.

eborg as far as I know no one's figured out quite how to get those links to show. They usually appear on the authority sites, but not always. Maybe it does have something to do with having a certain number of deep links to different pages or sections of a site.

Here's an article theorizing on how to get sitelinks (http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/sitelinks.shtml). The author knows his stuff. Also check the link to the coverage of the patent about this at the bottom of the post.

Harold Mansfield
08-18-2009, 09:41 PM
David I see you do have the sitelinks. I searched on 'Limited Liability Company Center' (no quotes) and there they were. If you don't want some of those pages showing up you can set up an account with Google's Webmaster Central and tell them not to show some of those links. If they have other links they think should go there they'll add them.

Of course those extra links are usually a good thing in terms of traffic so maybe it's best to leave them.

eborg as far as I know no one's figured out quite how to get those links to show. They usually appear on the authority sites, but not always. Maybe it does have something to do with having a certain number of deep links to different pages or sections of a site.

Here's an article theorizing on how to get sitelinks (http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/sitelinks.shtml). The author knows his stuff. Also check the link to the coverage of the patent about this at the bottom of the post.

Thanks. It was a good read. I really need to overhaul my SEO skills anyway.

vangogh
08-23-2009, 04:58 PM
Bill Slawski's most recent post at SEO by the Sea happens to be about Sitelinks and Quicklinks (http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=2818) (Microsoft's version). The post isn't about how to get them, but patent talk about the possibility of letting webmasters control which links show.

Thought the post would be appropriate to the discussion here.

Harold Mansfield
08-23-2009, 07:17 PM
Bill Slawski's most recent post at SEO by the Sea happens to be about Sitelinks and Quicklinks (http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=2818) (Microsoft's version). The post isn't about how to get them, but patent talk about the possibility of letting webmasters control which links show.

Thought the post would be appropriate to the discussion here.

Gonna check it out, thanks.

Bill Slawski
08-25-2009, 11:38 AM
The basic idea behind sitelinks or quicklinks involves helping searchers navigate to the page that they might be looking for more quickly.

You can break queries down into three different types: navigational, informational, and transactional. Navigational queries are the kind that when you type them into a search box, you already know where you want to go, or have a good idea that the page you want to find already exists. For example, I type "ESPN" into a toolbar searchbox as a shortcut instead of typing the address in my toolbar address bar.

If I want to download the latest version of Wordpress, I probably want a deeper page on the wordpress.org website. I type wordpress in the search box, and one of the sitelinks for download appears as a sitelink under the wordpress entry. Sitelinks are a navigational shortcut.

If you want to read more about navigational, informational, and transactional queries, a good place to start is this paper:

A taxonomy of web search (pdf)
http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2002/broder.pdf

I wrote about the Google patent filing on sitelinks back in 2006, and it explained some of the ideas behind sitelinks. If Google has enough information about how people use your website, and which links they might visit when they come to your pages, Google might add sitelinks to your pages. Again, that's for navigational queries (rather than informational or transactional queries), where they think that people may be trying to find your page with the query terms that they entered.

If you offer some type of product, or some product that is considerably more dominant than other products on your site (such as wordpress software on the wordpress site), they might include a link to that product as well.

So, the first step in acquiring sitelinks at Google is to be seen as a site that ranks at the top for a navigation query of some type. Google has recently started adding quicklinks under some links to some sites that aren't at the top of the search result, but the query terms for those again are navigational in nature.

As for my recent post on quicklinks, it would be nice if the search engines gave us some level of control over which pages and which text might be used for quicklinks. Cross your fingers.

vangogh
08-25-2009, 01:10 PM
Thanks Bill. Given that the first step is to be seen as a site that ranks for navigational queries would you think that ties sitelinks somewhat to brands? Navigational queries seem brand related to me. Not necessarily big brands, but the searcher has an idea who they're looking for and might not know the exact URL or are simply in the habit of going to a search box instead of an address bar.

Bill Slawski
08-25-2009, 01:29 PM
Yes, they can be related to brands. Search for "hilton" and chances are you want the home page for the hotel chain.

Search for "how to fix a flat tire" and it's much more likely that you are performing an informational query, so you won't see sitelinks in the search results.

Sitelinks don't necessarily have to appear only for brand names though. If I search for "seo by the sea," (without the quotes) at Google, I see sitelinks for my blog. If I search for "Bill Slawski," (without the quotes), I also see my blog at the top of Google's results, with sitelinks. They've determined that a search for my name is a navigational query, and that my blog is where people searching for my name most likely want to go.

Interesting that a search for "books" brings up Google Books as the top result, with sitelinks for that site...

vangogh
08-25-2009, 06:05 PM
Oddly when I search 'Google' they don't get the sitelinks. They weren't even the #1 result. At the top was an inserted News link.

I guess what I mean by the sitelinks being tied to branding is more in which sites get them. I realize they can show up for more than Brand searches, but I wonder if you need to have some kind of recognizable brand before you'll get them under your listing for any query.

You personally may not be a household name, but both you and your site certainly have a strong brand within a community. I can compare it to myself and my site. Our sites are probably set up in similar ways (running on WordPress). I'm hardly the brand within the community as you are though and so never see sitelinks for myself. People do search for me by both name and company name, but the majority of search traffic that comes my way is through an informational search and usually lands on one blog post or another.

Do you think maybe sitelinks become active for a site if that site receives a certain number or % of navigational queries. Maybe once a site reaches some threshold the sitelinks can start to show up?

Bill Slawski
08-26-2009, 05:35 PM
Do you think maybe sitelinks become active for a site if that site receives a certain number or % of navigational queries. Maybe once a site reaches some threshold the sitelinks can start to show up?

It's possible. That may be why we started seeing more sitelinks for sites over time - Google changed the threshold to something a little lower.

I do receive some searches for my name that show up in my log files, but it's not a very high percentage. Many of the people who arrive at my site do so through informational type queries as well.

There's a good argument to be made for working on increasing the branding of your site or the services or products that you offer as a means of possibly showing up in more navigational searches.

vangogh
08-27-2009, 12:34 PM
There's a good argument to be made for working on increasing the branding of your site or the services or products that you offer as a means of possibly showing up in more navigational searches.

Even beyond SEO working at increasing the branding of your site and business is important. I'm sure you'd agree. I think one reason some fail at both business and SEO is they ignore branding in favor of short term tactics. Building a strong brand is probably the best thing any business can do.

With the sitelinks it makes sense that there is some branding Google looks at. Most of the time when I see sitelinks it's for sites you would expect would have them. Sometimes though you see them on sites where you wouldn't expect to see them and it seems to throw everything I think about how they show up out the window.

Harold Mansfield
09-23-2009, 02:00 PM
I had to rehash this. There must be something else to this because this site soundcloud.com just launched, and the domain is only year old, and they have site links underneath their SERP listing already.

vangogh
09-23-2009, 02:29 PM
Looks like there's been something on the domain since the summer of 2007. That's when archive.org shows the first page they have. The domain is also closing in on 900,000 links and without looking I'd imagine quite a few pointing to each of the pages listed as a sitelink.

I think it fits with the idea this is a site with authority and the query is a navigational one.

Harold Mansfield
09-23-2009, 04:53 PM
The domain is also closing in on 900,000 links and without looking I'd imagine quite a few pointing to each of the pages listed as a sitelink.
.

I really need to learn how to do that..get 900,000 links before the site is even open for business.:eek:
That really screws up the curve for the rest of us. It used to be that 5k links was doing something, now you have to basically have half the world linking to you to get any real love.

vangogh
09-23-2009, 08:38 PM
If you look back at the pages in archive.org it looks like they started with an invite for the beta. That probably generated some links for a year or so before they actually launched. Think of your mystery thing.

There were a lot of pages in the archives for 2008. I didn't check them all, but are you sure they just launched now? Is it possible they were open for business last year?

Harold Mansfield
09-23-2009, 09:29 PM
If you look back at the pages in archive.org it looks like they started with an invite for the beta. That probably generated some links for a year or so before they actually launched. Think of your mystery thing.

There were a lot of pages in the archives for 2008. I didn't check them all, but are you sure they just launched now? Is it possible they were open for business last year?

Well I got the press release with the launch date. It makes since that it may have been in beta for a while...I just know that the official "Open to the public" was just a couple of days ago.

vangogh
09-24-2009, 12:56 PM
I guess they did a lot of promotion during the beta period.

Looking at the site they've had a blog going since July of 2007. Also if you do a link search at Yahoo Site Explorer the domain has a lot of links from what looks like a lot of different sources. The site owners might also have had some previous connections with the music industry to help them get started.

If you look through the blog it's clear that the site has been active for two years. The official release might have been a few days ago, but the site has been up and running and growing for the last couple of years.

Paper Shredder Clay
09-29-2009, 01:06 PM
Wow, this is cool that I seen this thread. I have been pondering how to get such site links on Google. But a bit disappointed now that there's no definite way to get them.

Harold Mansfield
09-29-2009, 03:23 PM
You know, as hard as I try, I just cannot beat anyone that has an in-house team. Some of the sites that I have come right below, or even beat for some search terms ( and I suspect traffic sometimes) have writers, designers and a staff...and I just can't get them.
I can take all the small players, but how do you compete with a team when it comes to SEO ?

vangogh
09-29-2009, 08:39 PM
You probably have to hire your own team. They have more people working on the same problem and can spend more hours overall working on it.

The other option is to be smarter about your seo. Get links from sites they can't. Of course as soon as they see you've acquired the new link they'll try to get it as well. Ultimately you're going to have to do something they can't replicate easily.

billbenson
09-29-2009, 09:19 PM
Ya, but, some niche search terms may not be worth the effort to the larger companies but a lot to you. I think its rare that they micromanage this stuff to that degree.

vangogh
09-30-2009, 12:52 AM
some niche search terms may not be worth the effort to the larger companies but a lot to you

Very true. Another advantage you might have is an ability to adapt and act quickly. It depends of course how big the other company is. If they're still a small company they have that flexibility too and they might even think it worth the effort to compete for some of those niche terms.

Paper Shredder Clay
09-30-2009, 11:06 AM
Very good advice!


Very true. Another advantage you might have is an ability to adapt and act quickly. It depends of course how big the other company is. If they're still a small company they have that flexibility too and they might even think it worth the effort to compete for some of those niche terms.