How can you get the right site links for your site?

[anilababla]

Hello all,

I have been trying to get Google to list relevant site links for my site when you type in our brand name, Loco2 or for when Loco2 comes up in a search result.

Different things come up when you search Loco2 and Loco 2.

We would like site links to look like how they do when you search Loco 2. However Loco2 is our brand name, NOT Loco 2.

Does anyone know why Google is doing this and whether we can influence results? We have done as much as possible via Google webmaster, in terms of specifying the links we DO NOT want Google to list for Loco2. However, when you search "Loco2", results only show simple site links.

Ideally what we want is:

• Loco2 to be recognised as the brand NOT Loco 2

• The same results (substantial, identical) for Loco2 as for Loco 2 (think o2 and o 2)

• For the site links to reflect the main pages of our site (Times & Tickets, Engine Room forum etc.)

Many thanks in advance!

Anila

[William.Lau]

This could be that LoCO2 is another branded term another company is using like LoCO2 Energy.

This can be fixed by just SEO the pages that you want to be indexed and searched. Majority of the time companies with less competitors using the same branded terms, they have a higher chance of dominating the SERP, this could be the case for your brand.

My suggestions, you should optimize your and build links around your targeted brand term 'Loco2'.

If you want more sitelinks, or more related site links(currently you have About - FAQs - Blog - Inspire me) you can demote these sitelinks within Google Webmaster Tools. You can list the subfolders you don't want to appear in sitelinks extension and it will randomly fill it with another link.

I don't believe you can CHOOSE which links appear at the sitelinks but only what not to include.

Good luck!

[AlanBleiweiss]

It's correct that you can't directly control or dictate which pages Google includes in sitelinks.  You can, however, help influence this by better optimizing the pages you want included through more emphasis on your brand within the content of those pages - integrate brand references within on-page content.  Then, work to get a mix of brand-centric anchor text into links coming from other sites that point to those pages.

It's not a guarantee, however I've seen some success in this method for various clients.

[anilababla]

We will try to optimise site pages that we want to come up. What tips do you have for that. For example on the Times and Tickets, do we need to make it explicit that this is where you can search and book trains? should this be via H1 tags or meta data or something else. The reason I ask this is that there is only a little text on this page for a reason as it's function is as a software tool.

What about the Loco2 / Loco 2 discrepancy? That is the main issue - we would like to see substantial site links that are identical for both these terms (I have changed the question to reflect this!)

[anilababla]

Have you got any suggestions of how to optimize for the brand Loco2 without coming across as OTT. The reason is we already have Loco2 on a lot of pages. Should we try and optimise each page we want as a site link for Loco2 AND relevant terms for that page?

[AlanBleiweiss]

The more emphasis, signals and depth of content, supported by a stronger individual page focused inbound link effort, the more likely the pages you care about will be to end up in sitelinks.

There isn't one formula unique to sitelinks that Google specifies, so I've only ever just applied best practices SEO concepts to my desired goal.  And have seen those pages sometimes become sitelinks.

[Plorex]

Alan,

On that note, do you recommend demoting the sitelinks via webmaster to get Google to replace it with the better optimized and relevant pages? or just let time do its thing

Thanks