Google's Sitelinks Update and Adapting to This Change Until recently, the sitelinks that you have most commonly seen have probably looked something like this:
The purpose of sitelinks is to help searchers navigate a specific page they are in need of as quickly as possible. However, earlier this week, Google announced its improved and expanded version of sitelinks. The newer version is arranged as a column of links and appears more prominently on the search engine results page.
Š Position2, Inc.
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The new sitelinks is certainly helping brands dominate the search results page. According to Google, displaying more sitelinks is designed to help users quickly navigate to the most relevant section of a site. But, let’s try and understand how the changes will affect websites, and how they can adapt and take advantage of them. For starters, the new sitelinks takes up a large chunk of the first page results thus ruling out potential competitors and other less relevant sites sneaking above the fold. Online user behavior will change as more users will want to click on the pages listed in sitelinks than look for websites listed below in search results, thus helping brand conversions significantly. Also certain is the tangible increase in organic visits and sales from keywords containing brand permutations. Adapting to this change is critical and website architecture is really important (directory structure, URL naming conventions etc…); also, make full use of Google’s webmaster console to manage sitelinks and take Google’s humanized results page and ranking factors into consideration.
© Position2, Inc.
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About Position2 Position2 is a Search and Social Media Marketing firm that delivers continuous growth for our clients using our proprietary “Surround and Intent” Marketing Methodology, delivered by our products. Our proprietary methodology is a result of years of experience in working with diverse clients to deliver customer acquisition goals through search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), and Pay Per Click (PPC) and online media advertising. Position2 was founded in 2006 with funding from Accel Venture Partners, and has offices in Palo Alto, Bangalore and Mumbai. Position2 is a certified agency with Google, Yahoo, Bing and is also part of the Google Adwords advisory council.
Position2's flagship product is Position2 Brand MonitorTM, a platform that allows users to listen, discover and engage with social media conversations in real time. With a team of over 100 professionals, Position 2 also provides expertise in online marketing solutions: SEO, PPC, Media and Advertising. Position2 works with leading global brands:
This article is also available on the Position2 Blog: http://blog.position2.com. For more information, email info@position2.com.
© Position2, Inc.
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