How many indexed pages do I have

an article added by: Jonathan Miskolc at 09152008


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Indexed Pages

A very basic fact of SEO is this: Before your website can rank well on the search engines, it must be indexed, or present, in the search engines. Is your website there to be found? Today you are going to find out by answering these questions:

- How many of my site's pages are indexed?

- Are my top landing pages indexed?

In the next sections, we'll show how you'll do it.

Total Pages Indexed on Your Site

Follow these steps to find out the total number of pages within your domain that are present on the major search engines. Let's do Google and MSN first since they work the same way:

- Starting with Google, type site:yourdomain.com (using your own site address in place of yourdomain.com) in the search box.

- Make a note of the number of pages returned. This is the total number of pages indexed from your domain. For example, in Figure 6.6, you can see that there are about 32,600 pages indexed within the domain mudcat.org.

- Repeat for MSN.

- Now, go to Yahoo!'s Site Explorer at http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com and type your domain into the search box.

- Make a note of the number of pages displayed. In Figure 6.7, you can see that Yahoo! has 271,228 pages indexed within the domain mudcat.org. You will get more data from Yahoo! Site Explorer and loads of information from Google Webmaster Tools if you verify that you are the site owner. See article 10 for details.

Keep in mind that there are limitations to this value. The total number of indexed pages may include broken links and old pages on your site. Think of it as a “big picture” number for watching trends or catching big drop-offs.

Now: Go to your Rank Tracking Worksheet and note the total number of pages indexed on each search engine.

Landing Pages Indexed

In addition to checking the total pages indexed, you'll want to determine whether each of your landing pages is indexed. After all, you wouldn't want to put a lot of time into optimizing a page that the robots can't see. Perform the following steps for each landing page:

- Enter the full URL of the landing page into Google's search box. If you get a listing for the exact page you were seeking, your page is indexed! See Figure 6.8 for an example.

- If the exact page you're looking for doesn't show up for the full URL, doublecheck to make sure it's not indexed. Find a unique string of HTML text on your page one that is not likely to exist on another site and search for it in quotes. Searching for a unique term like “Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues. Rumors and Tales swirl with the name” isn't likely to bring up anyone's site but the one you're looking for.

- Perform the same check in MSN.

- Go to the Yahoo! Site Explorer at http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com and type in the full URL for the page you are looking for. If the page doesn't show up at the top of the list, your page isn't indexed. (Do not try this search using the regular search interface at www.yahoo.com. It won't necessarily give you the results you're looking for.)

My Site Doesn't Have Typical Landing Pages!

For most SEO campaigns, and especially for the SEO plan that an hour a day allows, it makes sense to focus your efforts on optimizing and tracking a small number of landing pages (no more than 10) on your site. However, as we discussed in article 2, there may be some of you who do not follow this system. For example, bloggers should consider every posting to be an equally important landing page. Large catalog sites may follow a long tail approach, with the expectation that users can enter the website via hundreds of product pages. And for some businesses, the choice of landing pages will shift with the season. When your situation calls for a large or changing number of landing pages, you will have to adjust accordingly:You may wish to track more pages, or just your home page, or a select group of sample pages chosen from different areas of your site.You may wish to do separate SEO campaigns in sequence, or even scale up Your SEO Plan. Yes, this SEO plan is scalable. Give it 10 hours a day, and you can multiply your number of landing pages accordingly. Just don't forget to do the other little things in life, like bathing yourself and feeding your dog.

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