Updated analysis as of 12/10/09

Having submitted the sitemap files on 12/3/09, we were hoping to see some changes reasonably quickly in the indexing.  Without much additional linking – only because it hasn’t started yet – the numbers do look improved after just 1 week.

Indexing Counts (Site saturation) 12/10/09

• Google (258) +22
• Yahoo (4) +2
• Bing (23) +22

Original Post

One of MorePro’s newest clients has a pretty significant problem getting pages indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Since we’re going to be working diligently to improve this over the next 6 months, I thought it would be good to share the progress w/ everyone – kind of like a case study, but not so formal.

Be sure to check back for updates on how the site is doing.

Site Background

• The website is approximately 6 months old.
• Fewer than 10 total backlinks showing up (from multiple sources).
• The site sells cell phones & wireless plans.
• Existing indexing counts:
  • Google (236)
  • Yahoo (2)
  • Bing (1)

The Process(es)

• We first attempted to gauge from the client how large the site was, so we knew if the indexing numbers we were seeing were even close.
  • The client estimated approximately 200 total pages on the website.
• Utilizing the Xenu Link Sleuth tool (get some tips here), we ran our own scan of the website and discovered there were approximately 470 unique URLs on the site.
• Seeing the discrepancies within the 3 engines alone was enough for us to know there was an indexing issue, but we wanted to verify w/ our own scans exactly how far off each engine was (a lot).
• Using the Xenu tool’s XML sitemap exporter, we generated a valid sitemap.xml file that included all of the URLs that had been discovered.
• Accounts were setup on all the 3 search engines to validate/authenticate site ownership.
• The sitemap.xml file was manually submitted to each of the 3 search engines upon successful validation.
• We will additionally be adding backlinks via a variety of linking strategies, but that has not started just yet (very soon).

So that’s where we’re at as of 12/3/09.  The client is expecting quick results in hopes of acquiring some holiday traffic and we’re going to do the best we can to accommodate their requests.

Look for another update in about a week to 10 days.