Current site has 25k+ pages, however only 30 indexed (those on front of site) help?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by scottatmu, Aug 8, 2006.

  1. #1
    I currently run a website that has over 25,000 pages of content which I'm trying to get indexed, however Google has only picked up on the 25-30 links that are placed on the front page. So about a month, on top of already having the Google Sitemap submitting that to Google, I created a HTML Sitemap to all 25,000 entries and placed a link to that page on my main page. 30 days since and still nothing new. Any ideas of how to get it indexed better?
     
    scottatmu, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  2. KC TAN

    KC TAN Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Hi,

    I am assuming that you are using the site: operator to check for your indexed pages. One problem that I can think of is that the rest of the pages are not google SE friendly.. Do you have session ids on those pages? Are those pages only accessible to members- via logins?

    Maybe a link to that page will help :)
     
    KC TAN, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  3. AnaB

    AnaB Peon

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    #3
    Have you submitted a sitemap? Are your navigations search engine friendly and what KC Tan said are they member only's?
     
    AnaB, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  4. scottatmu

    scottatmu Well-Known Member

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    #4
    Site: www. mpgbuddy .com

    The HTML sitemap I created (and its linked to it on every page of the site) http:// www. mpgbuddy. com/allcars.html
     
    scottatmu, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  5. alexisthemovie

    alexisthemovie Peon

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    #5
    cool, i used to run a site like that.

    one thing about google, they don't index all your pages.
     
    alexisthemovie, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  6. scottatmu

    scottatmu Well-Known Member

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    #6
    alexisthemovie ...

    True ... just trying to find the best way to get greatest number indexed ;) Its a fun site and would love to be able to utilize search engine results in a better fashion to get more visitors. Any tips?
     
    scottatmu, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  7. Dead_Elvis

    Dead_Elvis Guest

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    #7
    Two things off the top of my head that I think would really help.

    From my own personal experience I would suggest working hard to get some good deep links -- ie, not to your index page, but relevant links to some of the individual car pages, from other websites. Even if you have to buy them.

    Also, you have a nice list of fuel efficient cars at the bottom, but I take it this list stays the same across all of your pages... could you create a list like these others, but have it link to cars that are similar to the one that is being displayed?

    I do this on a number of my sites, and it creates a massive web of interconnected pages, since each page is linking out to other pages that are similar, and each list of links is different based on the content of the page.

    Really helps spread the PR around :D

    Right now a spider comes along, finds a page, follows a link, and ends up on a page withh all the same links as the page it just came from :(

    Oh, one more thing. I would think it might be useful to have different Meta Keywords on each page... at least work the name of the car in there someplace.

    I don't think Google uses the Meta Keywords to rank pages, but I've seen it make a huge difference in Indexing.

    Good luck!
     
    Dead_Elvis, Aug 8, 2006 IP
  8. gordonfreeman

    gordonfreeman Peon

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    #8
    hmm.. try looking in the sitemap errors list.. see if there are any unreachable errors.. try to correct them if you can

    I had some due to my hosting not coping with the google crawler, so it often stoped him.. my index didnt move for several weeks, and I sure blame it on that..
     
    gordonfreeman, Aug 9, 2006 IP
  9. mad4

    mad4 Peon

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    #9
    You put 21,000 links on a html sitemap page? I would remove these and just have the sitemap linking to the 20-50 main pages on the site. Link to these 20-50 main pages from every page and build deep links to them from other sites.

    Then use the main pages to link to all the sub pages in that particular section.

    Also make sure there are no external/paid links in the footer or sidebar.
     
    mad4, Aug 9, 2006 IP
  10. UncleD

    UncleD Peon

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    #10
    I agree with what mad4 has said. Good advice.
     
    UncleD, Aug 9, 2006 IP
  11. scottatmu

    scottatmu Well-Known Member

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    #11
    Thanks everyone ... I guess I have a busy weekend ahead of me. :)

    This place rocks!
     
    scottatmu, Aug 10, 2006 IP
  12. andre75

    andre75 Peon

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    #12
    A sitemap seems to be a good idea. It has helped many people. But I would also look at your internal linking structure. How easy is it for a search engine to follow your links. Are you using fancy java script navigation menus? Are there multiple paths to reach a page? Do all pages have a link to the main page? Make sure every page can actually be found by a SE. Make sure you didn't block anything with robots.txt.
    If the site is new, Google will take its time before indexing 25k pages. If you followed all the rules, you just need to be patient.

    This answer may seem trivial, but sometimes people forget :) .
     
    andre75, Aug 10, 2006 IP
  13. Christine8

    Christine8 Peon

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    #13
    Try to put more indexable content on each page (250-500 words).
     
    Christine8, Aug 10, 2006 IP
  14. andre75

    andre75 Peon

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    #14
    I don't think this will help at all. My photo website has a large number of pages indexed. Most pictures contain a one liner as a descripiton and lots of them only a title (and alt tags). New pages are indexed very quickly though.
    I have a good linking structure though.
     
    andre75, Aug 10, 2006 IP
  15. dylanmills

    dylanmills Peon

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    #15
    I agree with Christine8. There is very little to differentiate the pages between each other. There is a ton of code on each page and very little of it is unique to the individual car. To satisfy my curiosity, I copied the code from one of the pages into Word and used the Word Count feature. It said that there were 127,815 characters in the code not including spaces. Doing a quick scan of the code, the only entirely unique content I was able to find was in the META Title, META Description and the page filname, which account s for roughly 100 characters. All other content can be found on many other pages on the site if not all of them. That means that of the 127,815 characters in the code, about 0.078% of them are unique to the page.

    I'd look to add some page specific content as suggested by Christine8 and rework the dropdown menus so they do not display all of the possible makes and models when the page is first loaded. This will go a long way towards improving the percentage of unique content on each page.
     
    dylanmills, Aug 11, 2006 IP
  16. john269

    john269 Notable Member

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    #16
    I would say that you need to break your sitemap down into categorizes and sub categories, etc.

    I think your site map is to large, it is just a page with every page link of your site on it.

    I think that is not an advantage to your site. I think google may infact penelize you for having a page with hundreds of links on it. It may look like you are trying to spam their engine or something as it is just done for the search engines.

    If you have a nice layed out directory type of sitemap then at least it will be neater and your visitors will also be able to use it better.

    Saying this, I have not got a sitemap on my site. I don't think one is really needed, even though I have not got every page of my site indexed. The search engine seems to miss the deeper pages. It seems to only crawl a certain deepness. Even if I did use a site map I don't think it will help because with the sitemap I will just have the same linking navigation structure as what I have got on my site anyway for my main navigation.

    I have done my main site navigation so that everthing is linked together nicely so that the search engines can find every thing and also the visitors.

    I just think I need to get some backlinks for these deeper pages. They are only about 5 clicks deep into my site.
     
    john269, Aug 12, 2006 IP