How to get Google to Crawl (and Index) the Non-Indexed Pages on your Website
The search engines know your website exists, but can they see the whole thing? Not sure? Double check by Googling “site:www.yoursite.com”. (Here’s what the results should look like.)
Google Webmaster Tools might also give you some insights into crawl errors and page errors.
Large websites, especially Ecommerce sites, are often the unfortunate ones to have a percentage of their pages never indexed. That means that searchers will never see those pages. Big problem? I’d say so.
Search engines find new pages by using links. So, with very few links to the deep crevices on your website, it makes sense that Google can’t see them. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is creating links to the page(s) in question. There are a few ways to do that.
On your own
Make sure that the page(s) is/are easy to find in the navigation. If not, fix it. If the page is already apart of your navigation, or it’s still not being indexed then…
- Add a sitemap (if you don’t have one already).
- If you have a blog, write a post about the page and link to it.
- Create a link from your homepage. Perhaps a featured product or service, depending on what the page is about.
- Create a link from similar pages on your site, but make sure they are indexed first!
- Share the page on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, etc.
Help from others
- Get a link to the page from another website or blog.
- Ask your network to share the page on their favorite social network.
- If it applies, share the page in a press release.
- Create an article and distribute it on your favorite article marketing site.
The trouble is, submitting your website to Google doesn’t necessarily mean it will be indexed. Instead, you’ve got to create links that Google will follow to your non-indexed pages.