That’s the central question which needs to be asked when people say that their site is not being indexed by Google. Of course, other factors like website architecture, crawling, indexing, etc. do play an important role but the ease with which crawlers browse your site is the most important factor.

There are numerous sites which make use of Javascripts or Splash or other technologies that are good for the user. But what about the search engines? They don’t understand sound or color or images. Unfortunately, they are literate only to read the text and not the special effects that webmasters crave for.

So how do you get a website crawled (and indexed) by Google?

Apart from manual submission to search engines and other factors, one method which can be controlled by the webmasters is the URL structure. URLs are like bridges, which help your readers as well as the crawlers to move from one page to another. Therefore it is imperative to have a simple and clean structure of URLs so that the crawlers spend less time in navigating and more time in indexing your content.

Here is a presentation by Google in which they talk about the best practices for crawling and indexing of a website. It also talks about what not to do with your website URLs. The basic guidelines they suggest to reduce inefficient crawling are:

1. Avoid maverick coding practices
2. Remove user-specific details from URLs
3. Optimize dynamic URLs
4. Rein in infinite spaces
5. Disallow actions Googlebot can’t perform

Go through the presentation and check out whether you are following any of those practices or methods that the Google bot does not understand!

Every website consists of multiple pages that provide different set of information. Depending upon the business and marketing objectives, one may have a 10 page website or even a 200 page website. It is very difficult to believe that every human visitor will scan through all the pages of your site. But the search engine crawlers will.

And if you are performing search engine optimization for your site, then there is high probability that you always want the crawlers to visit your site on a regular basis. But have you ever wondered what would happen if the crawlers who visit your site return empty handed?

Of course, your site will lie on the back pages of the search results for any keyword(s) related to your business. And the main reason for this would be broken links in your site.

What are broken links?

In simple terms, broken links are the inaccessible links that exist in your website. When the search engine crawlers encounter any inaccessible links in your site, they report broken links and this prevents them from indexing your website completely. When the indexing is done in a partial way, it becomes difficult for the search engine to ascertain the quality and relevance of your website for a particular keyword term/phrase. And this spells the doom for you as your site will lie in the back pages of the search results, attracting meager traffic and lower search engine rankings.

Are broken links spam?

Many people ask me whether search engines treat broken links as spam; and my answer is NO. Broken links are a result of poor website architecture and maintenance. Often webmasters link to certain promotional pages in the website and after a few days delete those pages. But they forget to clean up the links to those pages from the website or/and the Sitemap and that results in the generation of broken links.

Check whether your website has any broken links by using this tool.

Remember that the search engine crawlers are automated programs and cannot find a way through if they can’t see one. Humans can definitely do some trial and error to get to their desired page, but crawlers can’t. The crawlers can only navigate your site via links (internal and inbound) as it allows them to jump from one page to another.

A site that consists of broken links can never dominate the search results, no matter how well it is optimized. It is imperative to remove all the broken links from a site to give it some standing. Also, a neat and structured site architecture provides a better navigation experience to your users and contributes to successful Search Engine Optimization. For more information visit Golden Street Media.