How do I control which pages get displayed on Google results page?

[phloque (Philip Lock)]

On the google SERP my site appears with the home page and six of the site’s pages.
I can’t figure out why google is displaying these particular pages. These aren’t necessary the most important pages on the site.
Is there some way in RW I can control which pages appear on the google SERP and in which order?
Is it simply a matter of re-arranging the page set-up so the most important pages appear at the top of the Source List and in order of priority?
Thanks

[teefers (Doug Bennett)]

No, you don’t have any control over this. It’s entirely up to the search engine.
Those links are called SERP sitelinks and if they show up at all and what pages get selected is based on the search phrase the user typed in, not the importance of the site.

Have a look at this post:

Google results title Sections

These extra results are called SERP Sitelinks. They are awarded by the search engine to help users navigate your site based on the search phrase entered. It can be different or not show up for each search phrase people find you under. So if I search with google for: UX/UI Design game brighton uk I can find your listing put without SERP(site engine result page) sitelinks: [image] The sitelinks are driven both by content and structure on your site. You can also checkout what google says ab…

[1611mac (Greg Schneck)]

Enter “Google SERP” into google and check the results…

[phloque (Philip Lock)]

Thanks for the replies
I see I didn’t explain properly.
I was wondering more about what appears when someone does a search for my company name.
At present searching for my company name results in the home page and its description snippet appearing at number one - that’s something at least.
But the six sub-pages which Google is showing under the home page are not the one’s I would like to appear. Do I have any control over that.

[swilliam (scott williams)]

Short answer… no you have no control over it.
Long answer, you can influence it with SEO, metatags and site structure. But it depends a lot on search terms.

[phloque (Philip Lock)]

As Flash pointed out in a reply which I can’t see here (perhaps because I replied to his/her post by email rather than to the topic, what i needed was to delve into Google Sitelinks
Flash included a very helpful link to Google Sitelinks: How to Get Google Subheadings in the Search Results
As scott williams suggests, achieving what I want with sitelinks means quite a bit of work, but worth it

[teefers (Doug Bennett)]

There are tons of articles on how to get sitelinks to appear, how to get the description to look the way you like.
But as has been said, you can influence what search engines determine to display, but they make a choice based on the “search phrase” typed in by the searchers.
So in the example above the search phrase was your company name.
Google or any search engine added sitelinks for those pages because it found those pages to be the most relevant to the company name(the search phrase).

More than likely those pages use the company name in the page title, page description, in headings h1, h2 and or h3. Things like word density of the search phrase also have an effect, that probably why stuff like Sitemaps often shows up in company name searches. No real subject other than the name of the company.

Keep in mind Googles customers are the people searching, not the sites appearing in the SERP. Things like sitelinks title and description are there to make it easier for the searcher find what they’re looking up.

So if you want specific pages to have sitelinks for your companies name, then you would need to make the search engines think those pages are all about the company name. But that would affect things like conversations, and SERP rankings for other phrases.
You should be happy that you’re getting the sitelinks at all, lots of sites aren’t able to get them.

[phloque (Philip Lock)]

Thanks Doug Very helpful summary