Increasing the speed at which Google indexes your site

I've just launched a site with 4,179 pages of [quality ;)] content, all of it well optimised for a range of search terms. I've dealt with a lot of large sites before, and a lot of new ones, but never a large AND new one at the same time.

I'm desperate to get the entire site indexed as quickly as possible, and I've done the obvious:

- Submitted a well formed Google site map
- Acquired links back to the site (I've got a number from respectable CSS Galleries, about 10 in total ranging from PR 4 to PR 8 in one case!)
- Updated the key parts of the site as often as possible

So far, in about a week, I've got 17 pages indexed. At this rate it'll take several years to get the whole thing covered, so what can I be pro-actively doing to speed this whole thing up?

Many thanks

I usually don't see things for a few weeks. I try to build incoming links to important pages.

Also, did you ping this yet?

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http:www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

It may sometimes take a month, maybe more? It's not like "Clap!", google please index my site.

I think you have to be patient, one week is a really short period. At least you got your main page indexed, right?

:)

linking to those site that frequently index can really helps, like forums...

They are helping indeed, but he already he said he had few high PR links on the time he ran the site. (From PR4 to PR8)

Link Flow Balance is really important with a new and large site like this. Balancing your link flow structure internally with minimal crawl depth will help speed things up for indexing and the serps.

Make sure your internal linking is google friendly

As webmasters we are so obsessed with backlinks we forget about the configuration of the links on the site

The site's hierarchy is completely geared up with search in mind - I really doubt that could be the problem in this instance.

Here's something I find a little confusing:

- According to my web stats today, Googlebot hit my site 1694 times
- According to Google Webmaster tools, it hit my site 977 times on one occasion

Yet I still have only 17 pages indexed. Could it be that it takes time after spidering to hit the index?

How do you know what the hierarchy is for over 4000 pages?

Are you using any kind of Automated Link Flow Analysis?

Something as simple as duplicate url spelling, or a few broken links could throw you way off if you're assuming everything is structured properly.

The structure itself was generated automatically, pulling in pre-written manually written content. Basically, I have a tiered product range targeting each major city in the UK. So for example, the structure goes like this:

-Widgets
---UK Widgets
-------Widgets in England
-----------------Widgets in London
-------------------------Blue Widgets in London

and so on, for every major city in the UK. As I say, the content was written manually for each, for duplicate content reasons, but the pages themselves were then automatically generated and output as plain HTML.

To me, this seems like a clean and very easy to follow hierarchy, I don't think this could really be the problem, if indeed there even is a 'problem' as such.

I am not an SEO; I just write about it, so I'm hoping someone who knows better than me will correct me. How deep does your link structure go? I have read that no page should be more than three clicks from the home page, both for human usability and search engine crawling reasons. Could that be the issue?

Mine goes up to 3 yes, but I know sites that are going quite deeper so I don't believe this is a problem.

Take for example some directory site, or classified ads, craiglist etc. They are quite deep indeed!

My apologies but can you say this in Lehman's terms?

Sure.

Link Flow Balance relates to how the Link Flow of a website is structured. Terriwells is on the right track with crawl depth. No, you should not have a crawl depth of more than three clicks from the home page of a small site. Where it gets complicated is when you have a large website. Calculating the Link Flow Average of a website over 30 pages accurately is impossible without some form of automated link flow analysis. Ninja Story gave an example of the linking structure.

-Widgets
---UK Widgets
-------Widgets in England
-----------------Widgets in London
-------------------------Blue Widgets in London

If Widgets is the home page, how much Link Flow will be left by the time you get down to Blue Widgets in London? Google says none.

Thanks for clarifying. Now, how do you figure this out?