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There are some pretty interesting theories going around concerning the Google sitelinks. I won’t pretend to have the magic formula but based on what I’ve seen other people suggest (and that I have evaluated for myself) and what I have seen, I would say there are some things you can do to improve your chances of getting some sitelinks to appear in your Google search results.

However, there are some caveats.

First, the sitelinks are more likely to appear for your site name than for any specific query, but some sites are so closely associated with queries that they do get the sitelinks for those queries.

Second, the sitelinks can appear for sub-domains but they may include references to unrelated parts of the main domains. This seems to happen with mega sites that are closely associated with multiple queries.

So, what can you do to get some sitelinks going?

1. Divide your site into categorized sections using folders and/or sub-domains
2. Link to at least three sections of your site from your home page
3. Optimize those three-plus sections of your site so that they rank first for active queries
4. Cross-promote those three-plus sections of your site from every other page on your site
5. Obtain links to those three-plus sections of your site other domains, using appropriate anchor text and surrounding text

Think of a sitelink as a brand that is specific to your site. The sitelink represents a section of your site that Google deems to be popular and important.

You can monitor your sitelinks success by checking Google. When you’re logged in to Webmaster Tools, you can see if there are any sitelinks for your site. You’ll also see when they were last updated.

Every sitelink I’ve been able to document through my own sites has met the criteria given above. Some people speculate that Google is also tracking click-throughs, and I can confirm that these pages do get click-throughs, although some of them don’t get that many (we’re talking maybe a few dozen click-throughs per month for some sections).

It may be that a site has to meet a certain “size” requirement. Google does seem to have a pretty decent algorithmic sense of what constitutes a Web site. For example, it correctly associates sub-domains on Xenite.Org with Xenite.Org, but if you look at some very popular, well-populated free hosting sites, you’ll be challenged to find any of their member sub-domains or pages appearing in the sitelinks. So it follows that the algorithm may require that a minimum number of pages be associated with a “site” before it qualifies for sitelinks.

Do all the sitelink destinations have to rank first for anything? Not necessarily. Nor do they even have to rank first for a site search. But all the pages I see in my sitelinks (and in other people’s sitelinks) do rank competitively for at least one query — which only means they are probably earning direct click-throughs on a consistent basis.

That is why I think you need to optimize sections of your site and promote them on their own merits in search engine results and on other Web sites.

If you don’t have at least three such sections on your site, you probably won’t get any sitelinks.