Any Google SiteLink Experts out there?

[George Nenni]

I met with a medium size dealer group today, they presented an interesting challenge that I can't seem to find a successful example of, or an answer to. They have 6 or so stores, and they want their group-site SiteLinks to appear on Google organic search with each store listed. Typically with group sites, they either have zero SiteLinks, or they have "Locations", "Used Cars", "Careers", etc. (example attached) Instead they want their 6 stores to appear under their main organic search listing, showing links for each store-site.

Anyone had success manipulating SiteLinks for dealer groups using this approach?

 

[Jason@nabthat]

It is fairly simple. The website vendor should be able to do this.

 

[Alexander Lau]

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334?hl=en
At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We're always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future. 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.

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It probably pulls (from an automated standpoint) links based upon popularity and SEO essentials.

 

[George Nenni]

@Alexander Lau thanks, found that link also, as well as this one:
http://www.vpdm.ca/how-to-get-google-to-show-sitelinks/

My goal with the thread is to find out if there is both expertise out there, or know best practices. If you look at dealer body out there, some have SiteLinks, some do not, and for the ones that do, the results are all over the place. In many cases dealers have duplicates, or links to dead pages. Area of opportunity for dealers for sure.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I can remember long ago, they allowed user to manipulate that area (for a heartbeat). Now that Google automated this, it's not easy to control.

It can be a reflection of a piss poor website / platform and their bots are unable to decipher important links. It's not as if Google serves the same results all of the time, either. They have no real standards. Google's goal is to confuse search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and to uncover aggressive SEO techniques through delaying, or obfuscating results from SEO changes being made.

Google is quite happy fiddling with their algorithm for "best practice" reasons, but in reality, they just want to convolute the ranking equation process and sitelinks display in order to get you to BUY more of their PAID AD space. Now that the space (itself) has been limited, it's even more competitive.

However, are there opps in SEO for dealers? Heck yes (as you said).

 

[Alexander Lau]

@Alexander Lau thanks, found that link also, as well as this one:
http://www.vpdm.ca/how-to-get-google-to-show-sitelinks/

My goal with the thread is to find out if there is both expertise out there, or know best practices. If you look at dealer body out there, some have SiteLinks, some do not, and for the ones that do, the results are all over the place. In many cases dealers have duplicates, or links to dead pages. Area of opportunity for dealers for sure.

Sitemaps are important to tell their bots about your site, go to your Google Console and make sure everything is updated properly. The control of Sitelinks used to live in this area. I remember being able to remove the ones that I didn't want to show up.

 

[Alexander Lau]

It's a Low Volume; High ROI piece of content / component, which you could use as part of an overall SEO strategy to sell to dealers.

 

[Alexander Lau]

@georgenenni might be interesting to you or something you could use to sell your wares. A tool like SEO Powersuite can be used to show a dealer their pain and then the solution, over time.

The Good and the Great of Site Structure Visualizations
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/site-structure-visualization-guide.html

 

[George Nenni]

Alex, great tip thank you. I’m still researching recommendations, so this may be just the ticket!

-George

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Hummm..... This may help a little to achieve your goal. Using a Site Search operator in Google, the bulk of the sitelinks are on page 1 with an incognito browser. You may have to do some restructuring on the Group site, build landing pages specifically for each store thats optimized really well. Then de-rank / remove the pre-selected sitelinks in GWT. Something else I just noticed. If you look at the text on the homepage below the slider, you will see a small resemblance with these site links as well. Contact Us, Pre-Owned and New Inventory are the first 3 actual links in that text section.

HTH ~