Is it possible to change a sitelink title by off page SEO?

[DDL]

Hi all,

I checked a website of my company: sitelinks in SERP are with the correct url, but one of the sitelinks’ title is completely irrelevant.

Is it possible that it was changed from "outside"? Or maybe it's a bug?

Thank you,

Imre

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Imre,

Unfortunately there's not much you can do about the sitelink titles at the moment. They are fully automated by Google's algo and have no human input, that I'm aware of, as yet. All you can do is make sure your site architecture and linking structure is as good as possible. Google states that 'for your site's internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that's informative, compact, and avoids repetition.'

If of course you are completely unhappy with your sitelink then you can demote them.

Find out more about sitelinks here:

Google sitelinks

Hope this helps,

Adam.

[DDL]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your answer. My problem is that sitelink url is OK (that's why I do not want to demote it). But sitelink's anchor is a word that we do not want to use, because it is against our policy. I can send you exact details in a private message if you would like to know more.

As far as I know anchors and alt texts do not use this word.

It seems a very special issue.

Imre

[stukerr]

Hey,

Just a quick thought, is the page in question indexed in DMOZ? I haven't seen it on any of my pages in a while but it could be that Google is using the title from there rather than your title - if so the noodp meta tag could get rid of it. Probably not the issue but you never know.

All the best,

Stuart

[DDL]

Hi stukerr,

No, it's not indexed in DMOZ. Maybe it could cause the issue, but not for now.

I have to tell you that using the keyword as the anchor of the sitelink can be useful for somebody else. That's why I think that somehow our sitelink was manipulated: not the url but the anchor itself.

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Imre, by all means if you'd like to send me more detais via pm so I can see what you are talking about exactly, then feel free to do so.

Although I feel that my earlier advice will still be true. The anchor (sitelink title) is automatically generated by an algorithm and not manually edited (as yet). I have seen some pretty random sitelink titles for other sites. I have even seen sitelinks where the title has been taken from some random piece of code on the site. Unfortunately, without knowing the exact details of the algorithm, there is very little you can do to influence the anchors other than what Google outlines in their guidelines (which is very little).

Like I said previously, if the title is that problematic and you want it gone, then your only option is to demote the whole sitelink.