How To Increase Search Engine Saturation

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 22 of January , 2008 at 8:49 am

WebProNews suggests 10 ways to increase your search engine saturation. Actually, they called it Number of Pages Indexed. Whatever you call it, there is hope.

Here’s the list:

• PageRank
• Links
• Sitemap
• Speed
• Google’s Crawl Caching Proxy
• Verify
• Content, Content, Content
• Staggard Launch
• Size Matters
• Know How Your Site Is Found, And Tell Google

PageRank

From WebProNews:

It depends a lot on PageRank. The higher your PageRank the more pages that will be indexed. PageRank isn’t a blanket number for all your pages. Each page has its own PageRank. A high PageRank gives the Googlebot more of a reason to return. Matt Cutts confirms, too, that a higher PageRank means a deeper crawl.

I concur. This is proof that persistence pays off. New webmasters often wonder how to increase their PageRank. Well, it doesn’t happen overnight. You’ve got to keep building pages. Don’t worry about stats in the first 30 pages of your website. Just build. Eventually, your PageRank will rise. I’ve seen websites start off at a PageRank of 3 before they even have one page of content on them. That happens because of the website owner’s Whois data, I’m sure. If you have several sites with PageRank then your reputation will help you. If you are on your first website then you have to build your reputation. Be patient and be persistent.

Links

Links and PageRank go hand in hand. The more quality, relevant inbound links you build to your site then the more likely you are build your PageRank. If you have a good internal link structure then that will help your PageRank as well. One of the best strategies I’ve seen for websites is to start an external blog - a standalone blog with its own domain name on the same topic as your website - and build links from the blog to the website every day. Consistency in this will help you establish quality inbound links from a relevant source.

Speed

I can’t tell you how important this is. Too many beginning webmasters start off wanting to build massive sites with huge files that take a long time to load. Start small. Learn the ropes before you go Web 2.0. Huge files with low bandwidth will load slowly and that will hurt your indexing mojo. Again, from WebProNews:

This could involve simplifying the structures and/or navigation of the site. The spiders have difficulty with Flash and Ajax. A text version should be added in those instances.

Bingo! If you’re a newbie, stay away from Flash and Ajax. They are speed killers and you’ll struggle with indexing and PageRank.

Content, Content, Content

There is no substitute for quality, original content. Frequent updating of your websites will keep them fresh. Take static pages of your website that have not been updated in a while and change them up a little bit. It doesn’t have to be much; just a small change will let the search engines know that you’ve changed the page. Then re-upload it and you’ll get crawled again. Work on building inbound links to those pages as well.

Staggered Launch

Here’s another big one. New and inexperienced webmasters want to build Rome in a day. Don’t build your entire website off line then try to upload it all at once. Do it in stages. Plan your website so that it is usable while you work on your long range goals. Staggered launch will build your PageRank and indexability a lot more quickly and reputably.

Size Matters

Bigger, better, faster, and more (thanks to 4 Non Blondes) should be your motto. The bigger your love handles - uhm, I mean website - then the more pages you’ll have indexed. Kind of a no-brainer, huh?

Know How Your Site Is Found, And Tell Google

Track your stats and understand what is going on with your website. Work with the search engines, not against them. One last time from WebProNews:

Find the top queries that lead to your site and remember that anchor text helps in links. Use Google’s tools to see which of your pages are indexed, and if there are violations of some kind. Specify your preferred domain so Google knows what to index.

All of this matters. Anchor text, verification, and Webmaster Tools. Use them. That’s what they’re there for. You can have a world class website with a little work and persistence. Did I mention persistence?

Category: Link Building, SEO, Search Engine Positioning, Search Engines

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