Site Link Issues

[RobDalton]

For several search terms I get site links for the page http://www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/kolea-rentals/kolea-condos/

It makes sense that that page be a site link as it is one of my most used pages, but the problem is google gave it the site link "Kolea 10A".  I am having 0 luck making any sense of why that was chosen.  It should be something like "Kolea Condos" or something of that nature.

Does anyone have any thoughts on where google is coming up with this?

[Alick300]

Hi Rob,

I assume you are aware of that Google only show sitelinks for results when they think that 'll be useful to the user.

If you don't want to show "Kolea 10A" as sitelink you can demote them. As far as best practice is concern Google said

"There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks. For example, for your site's internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that's informative, compact, and avoids repetition."

Thanks

[RobDalton]

The page is a great site link, but the text used does not correctly describe the page. I am not aware of anything done on the page that would make Google think it should be "Kolea 10A".

[Andy.Drinkwater]

What would you prefer the sitelink to say? It isn't an easy job to get them changed because we have so little control over it, but there are best practice changes you can do, as Rob has already said.

-Andy

[RobDalton]

Andy,
To be honest, I am not looking for anything particular.  Kolea Rentals or Kolea Condos would make the most sense.  Kolea 10A makes 0 sense and I can not see from any of the code where they would have generated that from.

Some of it is just curiosity as to how google came up with that.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Well that is mentioned on the page 3 times, so Google is clearly liking it for some reason. As to why, that is something of a mystery.

-Andy

[Alick300]

Hi Rob,

I am sharing a very recent article on Google sitelinks by Bill Slawski. I hope it give you some idea how Google decide which sitelinks to show.

http://www.seobythesea.com/2015/06/how-google-may-choose-sitelinks-in-search-results-based-upon-visual-or-functional-significance/#more-14771

Thanks

[Dr-Pete]

What search query are you using to get those site-links? They can be query-dependent. As others have said, you don't really have much control other than to demote them. Google will rewrite site-links just like they'll rewrite titles. In some cases, it's because they feel the title is a poor match to the query or that the title is long or a little spammy, but that's not always the case. Sometimes, the rewrites can feel more than a little arbitrary.

[RobDalton]

I use terms like "Kolea Rentals".  The site link is good, but just not the term they chose.

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah, I'm honestly not seeing much rhyme nor reason to that. There are plenty of other properties listed on the page. Your header structure is slightly odd, but your title tag and other meta data seem fine. I'm not sure why Google has grabbed "Kolea 10A". It could be due to some inbound anchor text (in links from other sites), but it would take quite a few, I'm guessing (one or two links is going to lead to Google overruling the title).

The queries I'm finding it on have nothing to do with "Kolea 10A", so I don't think this is query-dependent. Unfortunately, much like with title rewrites, Google hasn't given us any control over the process.

I'm noticing that the other two links I see are "Kolea Map" and "Kolea Beach Club", neither of which are coming from the page titles. They seem to be coming from internal links, such as on this page:

http://www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/kolea-rentals/

I wonder if there's an internal link with the specific property for some reason, or possibly inbound links or bad sitemap data? Not sure how to circumvent that other than possibly give the page a shorter title that Google is more likely to use. You can sometimes use the NOODP tag to prevent some rewrites, but that tends to be a crap-shoot (it's risk-free, but it rarely works).

[RobDalton]

Thanks!  We will hope they figure it out.

[JMSCC]

Do you know how many clicks, visits, or bookings the Kolea 10A link has versus other bedroom villas on the page? maybe that could be a factor.

[RobDalton]

That is actually a good thought, but Kolea 10A is a little below average in traffic compared to the others.