Secondary Navigation doesn't show up in google search as sitelinks

As you can tell from the images attached, the "shop" link which is part of the secondary navigation doesn't show up on google search as a sitelink at all.

I know you can't control/customize sitelinks, but are there any workarounds that I can do to add "shop" as a link to the search result?

Should I add a link to the primary nav and then hide it in css? If so how do I isolate and hide only one header link, and still have the rest be centered on the page?

I have a client who has been having a sitelinks issues so your post caught my attention. You are correct that there are almost no controls anymore over what Google displays in sitelinks. We used to be able to at least ask to remove something if we didn't want it there, but even that was removed a few years ago.

So, Google tries its best to determine what the most important links are on your site. And in your example, they recognized that the main navigation links, which are front and center, were the most important. I don't know that i would add a link in there and hide it and try to recenter everything. In general Google really frowns on hidden text that is only seen by search engines and they are basically spidering sites as a user would see them these days, so it might not even help.

I can offer 2 suggestions. (1) Put the a second shop link in the center navigation. I know it might drive you crazy and ruin some aesthetics but at the same time if it is that important and it does the job, then it might be worth it. (2) Add another shop link to the footer of each page in an effort to show google through internal links that the shop page is important to you.

Sorry I don't have a better answer!

On 6/30/2020 at 12:24 PM, modsquare said:

I have a client who has been having a sitelinks issues so your post caught my attention. You are correct that there are almost no controls anymore over what Google displays in sitelinks. We used to be able to at least ask to remove something if we didn't want it there, but even that was removed a few years ago.

So, Google tries its best to determine what the most important links are on your site. And in your example, they recognized that the main navigation links, which are front and center, were the most important. I don't know that i would add a link in there and hide it and try to recenter everything. In general Google really frowns on hidden text that is only seen by search engines and they are basically spidering sites as a user would see them these days, so it might not even help.

I can offer 2 suggestions. (1) Put the a second shop link in the center navigation. I know it might drive you crazy and ruin some aesthetics but at the same time if it is that important and it does the job, then it might be worth it. (2) Add another shop link to the footer of each page in an effort to show google through internal links that the shop page is important to you.

Sorry I don't have a better answer!

What if I switch the primary and secondary navigation menu items, and make the current primary menu items secondary and vice versa, would that be better?

Anyone else has a take on how to solve this issue?