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My company's website ranks highly for many relevant queries, and it ranks #1 for an exact domain match. So, that's going well. But for some reason, I can't seem to get Google sitelinks in the SERP.

My competitors seem to get sitelinks for EDM, and often times they get sitelinks (and I don't) even when they rank below me in the SERP. The injustice!

What am I doing wrong? I have a theory that it might be because my site blog (which has globally relevant content) uses a different navigational structure, is written in Wordpress (the rest of the site isn't), and is only loosely coupled to the rest of my site. On top of that, according to GA impressions and clicks for my blog posts exceed the hits on my local content by several orders of magnitude.

So, my theory is this:

  1. Google considers my blog to be the meat and potatoes of my site.
  2. My blog follows a completely different navigational structure from the content that I want to drive (local) traffic to.
  3. The local content is deemed not relevant for sitelinks, because it isn't linked to in the nav menu of the blog.
  4. Sad puppies

But if this is the case, why don't I even get a sitelink for my blog?

TL;DR: I can get it up (in the SERP), but I can't deliver (sitelinks).

dan
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alexw
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    I disagree that this is a duplicate question. I'm not asking a general "how do I get sitelinks" question - I'm asking if a specific aspect of the structure of my site is hurting the likelihood of my getting sitelinks. – alexw Mar 27 '15 at 15:49
  • the sitelinks process changed, it is not a duplicate question – Mousey Sep 24 '15 at 19:32

1 Answers1

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Sitelinks are offered to websites generally due to the amount of traffic they receive. They are often triggered for brand searches too. It has nothing to do what the domain looks like (i.e. EMD).

There is nothing you can do to influence the availability for sitelinks for your domain other than keep serving great content which is useful to your visitors and subsequently increase the amount of relevant traffic to your website.

If you have an EMD, then the likelihood you'll be offered sitelinks purely based on your brand is already minimised so there's one negative to use an EMD for your website straight away.

zigojacko
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    I doubt that. I am the only one among my local business competitors who has a blog, and I'm creating content that is accessed (as confirmed by GA) by tens of thousands of people all over the world. There is no way that they are getting more traffic than I am, at least the traffic to my blog. – alexw Mar 27 '15 at 15:51
  • Is your blog in a sub directory of your main website (i.e. /blog)? – zigojacko Mar 27 '15 at 17:28
  • Yes. Also, the main site has a "Blog" link in the top-level nav, but once you navigate to the blog, the menu changes and you only have two nav links that take you back to the main page. You can see what I mean here: http://bloomingtontutors.com – alexw Mar 27 '15 at 17:59
  • @alexw you are correct that the traffic is no longer relevant, the new sitemaps process only involves adding code to your home page - structure is not relevant and blogs can have them too - https://developers.google.com/structured-data/slsb-overview – Mousey Sep 24 '15 at 19:31