Thread: Google Sitemap

I posted back when I first submitted my site map. At the time I was told to give it time. Its now been 5 months and very little change, out of 4,124 urls I have only 454 indexed.

What would cause this?

Sitemap Index Total: 4,124, Indexed: 454

With those urls that do not get indexed, did you try to access them randomly and see if they're reachable? URLs first have to be reachable during a normal crawl of the site and then they also have to qualify for indexing based on the other criteria - uniqueness of content being one of them. The time it will take for your URLs to show up in searches will depend on how fast Google crawls your site and how strong your site ranking is.

Yeah, I picked several and they are all accessible. The content would certainly be unique, each URL is a completely different product.

Hi All,

My client has moved from their existing site php to storefront and we have submitted links google sitemaps but its showing php page links not storefront links.

Any Idea why it's having this issue?


Regards
Nagesh

Hi

Are your sitemap stats coming from Google webmaster tools? Sometimes, the webmaster figures don't always match reality and you find that Google has actually indexed your pages.

To test it, pick a URL that you don't think has been indexed and try searching for the page title (or URL) in Google - if it appears, it's indexed!

Getting to the top of page 1 results is your next challenge, create a strong page title, use an H1 tag wrapped around the product name, then a hierarchy of H2, H3's around other important items.

...and get lot's of unique and interesting content to generate in-bound links and traffic to the site.

I searched the links in google it's not available. How will I enable this? already submiited to sitemaps.


Regards
Nagesh

Nagesh: You need to start your own thread! Otherwise we get two people's problems intertwined here.

ssgumby: Did you get your problem sorted out? I see its been a couple more months. Any change in indexing? If not, it is definately time for some SEO work for you.

One problem I've seen is duplicate content not internally with your site but externally with other sites. For example are using using stock cut-n-paste descriptions from product manufacturers? If so there may be 1000's of other sites using those descriptions. Re-work them a bit, expand short hand marketing sentances into more normal narrative. (Marketers from the print world are often working with tight maximum character counts - marketers from the web world need more normal reading content for SEO)

As per webopius' suggestion, make sure you have made up a product package that uses H1 tags, then use H2/H3 tags in the body of your long descriptive text.

For example:

H1 - ACME Widget Model B

then inside the description field put:
H2 - ACME Widget Model B - Manufacturer's Description
H2 - ACME Widget Model B - Configuration & Options
H2 - ACME Widget Model B - Warranty Information
etc... (try to include the keywords people might search for in relation to this product in your H2s)

With a paragraph or two under each heading. You want your word count up to 300-600 words per product.

Also do you have more than 10 pages of products in any one "entity page" (ex: category). Google has been rumored to stop crawling past page 10 on pages like this. This means you need to have a good internal linking structure to spread out the links to each product/category. Good categorization/sub-categorization, rotating featured products on your home page, maybe some deep backlinking as well.

If you need some help, feel free to get in touch outside the forum.
Regards,
Ben