Recently, Google made changes to how its site links are displayed in search engine results pages (SERP’s). This change can positively impact the click through rate (CTR) of your website, i.e. how many people click on your listing. We’ll give you some essential tips on how to achieve this so read on!

Google’s new and extended site links
First of all, here’s how the new and extended site links look like on a typical SERP. The maximum number of site links increased from 8 to 12:

As you can see it takes up a lot of space, and stands out really well. If Google decides to display site links for your website, your site will get a much more prominent display than before.
Generally speaking, Google only shows site links if it is sure that a website is the perfect match for a search query (usually a product name or company name searches). Google generates the site links for your website based on your website navigation, and based on the links that point to your website.
If Google currently doesn’t show site links for your website then you should work on your website navigation:

• Try to avoid JavaScript and Flash navigation and try to use regular <a href> links as often as possible.
• When using images for your website navigation, make sure that the images contain alternative texts (ALT- attribute) that allow Google to crawl and categorize your links.
• Do not use too many navigation links and make it easy for users and search engines to find out which pages of your website are the most important pages.

How to make site links more attractive and increase their CTR

Google uses the first 30-35 characters of the meta description tag of a web page to display the snippets (title, URL and meta description). To increase the number of clicks on the snippets, you should optimize your meta description tags:

• Compelling/Interesting: the first 35 characters in the meta description tag should contain a clear description of the page and/or a call-to-action.
• Uniqueness: each page of your website should have its own meta description.

Note that Google updates the sitelinks of a website periodically. It may take some time before the new descriptions of your web pages appear in the sitelinks.
I believe the new site links are a positive change as they show the user much more information about a website at a glance.

It’s also faster as you can directly click and go to the page of your interest, such as the Contact or About Us page.

Make sure to implement the above optimization tips to reap the greatest rewards of the new and extended site links for your website and business!