How are these links being displayed?

[SelectHub]

How does one markup their site to get the small sitelinks to appear in SERP listings as seen in the example image below?

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[Ria_]

You'd use alt text on an image link, but not text. Alt text is the text that would display instead of the image if the image isn't shown for whatever reason (e.g. for the visually impaired or for those who prefer to browse text-only). Title text is the text that displays when you hover over something. You can use it in addition to the alt text, but it would be the title that displays when you hover over the image.

I'm sure all three (alt, title and anchor text) help Google to learn what a link is all about.

[SelectHub]

They actually specifically refer to it as "alt" in this help file:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334

[Ria_]

I'm sure there are a few little bits and bobs that could help to encourage which pages to show as sitelinks in Google. Do you mean title text instead of alt text (the text that shows when you hover over a link)? Adding that, as well as having your main links in the website's main navigation and these pages being higher in the site structure would probably help. (But, from my experience, lack of title text for the link wouldn't prevent Google from showing the page as a sitelink) But really, with a little bit of time and patience (and everything else), they should start showing naturally regardless.

Good luck!

[SelectHub]

Thank you, Ria! I do notice in the Search Console help files it does mention something about tagging internal links with alt text (along with good anchor text) as a way to better optimize these links. I wonder based on that suggestion that only links that have alt text would even be considered for sitelinks? It's especially peculiar as alt isn't even a recognized attribute by the W3C standards...

Nevertheless, thank you for your response - I've found in my additional research that simply adhering the SEO best practices (along with longer standing high rankings) are the best formula for getting these sitelinks.

[Ria_]

Unfortunately, there is no way to mark up your website to display sitelinks in search results. Google will only display them for reputable websites if they think that these additional links to pages within your website are useful to the user's search query. Can't really do anything else, I'm afraid. Apart from demote pages in Search Console that you don't want to appear as a sitelink. Other than that, sitelinks are a little out of our control....